MaryAnna Garrett was drawn to the show for the comedy.

Zach Thompson had taken a break from the stage and done behind-the-scenes work, but he was drawn to the comedy, too.

These two actors and the rest of the cast invite you to enjoy the hilarity of Jackson County Community Theatre’s dinner theater production of “The One-Act Play That Goes Wrong.”

It will be staged at 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday (nondinner matinee) and 6 p.m. Feb. 23 and 24 at The Pines Evergreen Room south of Seymour.

Described as an all-out farce of epic proportions, the show takes place on opening night of the Cornley University Drama Society’s newest production, “The Murder at Haversham Manor,” where things are quickly going from bad to utterly disastrous.

This 1920s whodunit has everything you never wanted in a show — actors who trip over everything (including their lines), sets and props that can’t seem to work correctly and an unfortunate collision with a door.

Nevertheless, the accident-prone thespians fight to make it through to their final curtain call with hilarious consequences. Part Monty Python, part Sherlock Holmes, this Olivier Award-winning comedy is guaranteed to leave you aching with laughter, according to the synopsis on JCCT’s website.

“It looked hilarious. Just in a few of the excerpts I read, I’m like, ‘That’s funny. I’m going to have to try because it’s funny,’” Garrett said. “I haven’t done any funny shows. They’ve all been dramas or sappy ones. That’s probably another reason I was like, ‘Yes, I can be funny.’”

She plays the role of the butler, who serves up drinks and comedy.

“I just like the funniness of it. It’s just funny, but it’s believable funny,” Garrett said of the show. “I guess maybe if you’ve done shows, you know how realistic some of the things that happen are, and you’re like, ‘That could be real life.’”

She likes the cast, too.

“It’s just a great group of people,” Garrett said. “Everybody is so funny, and everybody is just pulling it off really well, and it has been very enjoyable. I think the audience is really going to laugh because it’s funny.”

Thompson said besides the show being funny, he was drawn back to the stage because of the people involved in this production.

“Several of the people working on it are some of my favorites to work with,” he said. “I hadn’t done a proper comedy show in a long time, and this one is more my style, like when I’m onstage doing comedy, I like more of the physicality. As all comedies are fun, the more physical stuff, getting to do the old Laurel and Hardy slapstick kind of stuff, it has all of the elements of the old ’30s, ’40s comedy I like.”

There also are Marx Brothers-style jokes thrown in with everything else, Thompson said.

“It’s such a fun show is what drew me to it,” he said.

He looks forward to seeing how the audience reacts, as they are expecting some things to go wrong since that’s the name of the show.

“The things that actually happen during this are so wildly unpredictable for a lot of it that you don’t see it coming, so we’ve worked on it enough that we know ‘OK, this is going to happen at X time,’ but the audience doesn’t have any idea,” Thompson said.

“Seeing how they react to it and how their reactions feed ours … it’s very I want to say interactive, but not directly,” he said. “How they respond to things is going to influence hard how we respond to things, how fast we move with things. There are so many things we’ve planned on happening, but at every rehearsal, there’s always something new. It’s different than what we were actually expecting.”

This also is a show within a show, which Thompson said isn’t done a lot these days.

“That was also a big factor to me, that it is multi-layered and I’m playing an actor playing a role,” he said. “It’s different, but it’s a lot more fun. There are a lot of different challenges to it to make sure you’re doing that while still portraying their story because we’re doing the play that goes wrong, but the actors they are playing are doing ‘The Murder at Haversham Manor.’”

Brinna Sharp is director of the show. She said she likes it because it’s very technical and very complicated.

“It’s a 1920s-, 1930s-style murder, so it’s right up my alley, the Sherlock Holmes kind of feel but more in the rolling ’20s,” she said. “Really, the show must go on is the message of the whole show.”

If you go

What: Jackson County Community Theatre’s dinner theater production of “The One-Act Play That Goes Wrong”

When: 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday (show-only matinee) and 6 p.m. Feb. 23 and 24

Where: The Pines Evergreen Room, 4097 N. U.S. 31, Seymour

Cost: $40 for dinner, $20 for nondinner matinee; buy online at jcct.org or call 812-358-5228

Director: Brinna Sharp

Assistant director: Lester White

Stage manager: Lilly Ponder

Assistant stage manager: Lisa Burrell

Props master: C.J. Sharp

Set design: Brinna Sharp

Set construction: Ron Duncan, Joe Bradley, Brinna Sharp

Production manager: Paul Angle

Cast: Zach Thompson, Curtis Nowling, MaryAnna Garrett, Andrea Igo, Lucy Horton, Pete Law, Keggin York, Paul Angle