To say that Peter Pan goes wrong is putting mildly.

In an evening where Tinker Bell almost gets electrocuted, Peter comes close to bashing his brains out in a flying mishap and Mr Darling almost strangles himself on his bow tie, this is an hilarious take on J.M.Barrie’s masterwork where the Lost Boys are very lost indeed.

But let me say immediately this is a hugely funny send-up of the whole Barrie thing as performed with dogged sincerity by Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society, a group of amateurs who the gods of the theatre seem to have given the brush-off .

In amateur theatre, anything can happen and frequently does, something the skillful director, Adam Meggido knows well and which he uses to flesh out his comic send-up.

As matter-of-factly as possible, the actors go about the serious business of bringing their characters to life, and thus when disaster strikes it is all the more hilarious.

Within this Hellzapoppin, roller-coaster of a production Meggido cleverly mocks our expectations of what traditional theatre is all about. In most cases you get a play with some laughter here, a problem there, much of which is generally resolved in the last act.

Finally, the curtain comes down, we applaud and go home. But here you see how artificial our expectations are in a general way and just how they can be splintered into craziness.

Here it is comic mayhem from start to finish.

Nothing ever goes right and Tootles is in a wheelchair with a ferocious stammer and a broken leg.

At one point Mrs Darling pulls the switch on the nursery wall lights, but the wrong one comes on and then they all fuse anyway.

Nana the dog makes a startling entrance through a dog-sized door flap, then bangs his head on exiting before getting stuck completely, meanwhile a taxi honks outside for Mr Darling to leave for his dinner party (which he can’t do because he’s lost his cuff links).

Neverland has never been like this and probably will never be again. The mermaids collide with the set, Peter is at the mercy of the fly team and ends up hanging upside down before doing himself serious injury, while Hook’s hook comes off at regular intervals. The cantilevered Jolly Roger, tilting and tipping precariously sends the actors off balance, at which point a beefy technician, his jeans half off, takes over and is crucified again by the totally incompetent fly team.

At this point the roof went off with laughter and I reached for my inhaler to avoid having an asthma attack.

Once again it would be invidious to single out individual performances in much devoted playing, but everybody had a soft spot for the inept crocodile (Matt Cavendish) who (naturally) ended up on Mrs Darling’s lap.

Runs until Saturday at Malvern Theatres then at Birmingham Repertory Theatre from January 27 until February 1.