THE Play That Goes Wrong must be doing something right because the Olivier Award-winning West End hit is on its third British tour, visiting 37 theatres from January 4 to October 6, including a York run next week.

What's more it is also enjoying its new status as Broadway’s longest-running play, buoyed by a 2017 Tony Award in a year when the show that began life playing to four people on the London fringe circuit went wrong in 12 countries simultaneously, taking its international awards to 11.

If it is good enough for New York, then it certainly good enough for old York too, where the calamitous comedy written by Mischief Theatre company members Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shield visits the Grand Opera House from Monday to Saturday.

Directed by Mark Bell, with sets by York Theatre Royal alumnus Nigel Hook, the show is a "highly physical comedy packed with finely-tuned farce and Buster Keaton-inspired slapstick delivered with split-second timing and ambitious daring".

The hapless plotline is built around the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society attempting to put on a 1920s’ murder mystery, but as the title suggests, everything that could go wrong does indeed go wrong, as the accident-prone thespians battle on against all the odds to take their final curtain call.

York Press:

Jake Curran, as Chris/Director, left, Kazeem Tosin Amore, as Robert, Bobby Hirston, as Max, Liam Horrigan, as Understudy, Louisa Sexton, as Understudy, Benjamin McMahon, as Dennis, Katherine Dryden, as Annie, Steven Rostance, as Charles, and Elena Valentine, as Sandra, in The Play That Goes Wrong

"Why would all these regional theatres want a return visit of our little murder mystery show when last year’s tour went so badly wrong? I am at a loss to understand it," says bewildered producer Kenny Wax, tongue last spotted pushing in the direction of his cheek.

Let's ask Pontefract actor Bobby Hirston - who will play Max in his first TPTGW tour as part of an entirely new cast of eight and four understudies - why Wrong is so very right? How it's going, Bobby? "Well, it's tiring, but that's relative. I used to work in a bar for eight-hour shifts and that's harder. The laughter just courses through you in this show," he says.

"I went to see it at The Duchess in London the night before the audition and I said to a friend, 'if I don't get it now, I'll be really upset'. To see the whole audience in fits of laughter and willing the cast on, I was thinking, 'this looks the most fun you can have on stage'."

Has that proved true? "Absolutely! I'd say it's the most fun I've ever had on stage and it keeps you on your toes because it's different every night as it's down to the audience, and when they're really up for it, it's really great."

Written by former LAMDA students who had first formed a comedy improv group, the source of the comedy lies in the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society attempting to stage The Murder At Havisham Manor. "It's supposed to be a serious murder mystery and isn't at all funny to the people performing it who are just trying to get through it," says Bobby. "A lot of the humour is slapstick, and it's all a bit like Cluedo meets Buster Keaton meets Fawlty Towers."

York Press:

"Max is very excited but very nervous too, which makes him great fun to play," says Bobby Hirston

The more the cast performs the show, the more opportunities come along for the play to go wrong in unexpected ways as well as expected ones. "I've picked up a habit of falling over at the wrong moment, like slipping on water the other night, falling head first and just having to get up and carry on," says Bobby.

"It's really interesting to see what happens when something goes wrong in the show, when we miss a beat or something, or when something's supposed to go wrong but doesn't, and it goes right instead, but no-one in the audience knows it!"

At drama school, Bobby worked on both straight plays and comedy, "but I haven't been to 'comedy school','' he says. "A lot of it comes down to comic timing with the cast around you, and it's a real team effort on and off stage. Being such a physical show, you have to look after yourself and each other and we do," he adds.

In the play within the play, Bobby's character Max is playing Cecil Havisham, brother of the murdered Charles Havisham. "Max has never performed before, so it's his first night as an actor and he's very excited but very nervous too, which makes him great fun to play," he says.

"He's quite naive as well, and in my mind he's had a sheltered life, so being on stage warps his fragile little mind."

What could possibly go wrong next, Bobby?

The Play That Goes Wrong goes wrong again at Grand Opera House, York, Monday to Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york. Then it goes even more wrong at Hull New Theatre, May 21 to 26; 01482 300306 or hulltheatres.co.uk