rogue's ramblings

In Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Robert comments on Sandra 'flirting with everybody'. Everybody, you say? I do love an opportunity to ship a character with everyone, but how do I learn how to write everyone?

When I get fannishly into a work of fiction, I want to gather whatever information I can find that might be useful for characterisation. Usually, this is a simple matter; I just have to watch the show or read the book or play the game!

The Goes Wrong Show universe is more of a challenge. The actual actors are playing fictitious 'actors' who are playing characters, and it's the 'actors' I want to learn more about. If you want to learn more about the fictitious members of the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society, you really have to go digging!

There are snippets of characterisation scattered across a bunch of theatrical performances and supplemental materials, some of which are readily available and some of which really aren't. The Goes Wrong Show itself is easy to come by; it's on BBC iPlayer (although I bought it on DVD because we don't have a television licence), and I've heard it's free on YouTube outside the UK.

(If you're curious about this stupid thing I've gone insane about, I suggest trying the Goes Wrong Show episode '90 Degrees', which instantly makes it clear how ludicrously dedicated the (actual) actors are to the craft of fucking everything up. It takes genuine effort to make a play go this badly!)

Beyond that, I find myself desperately piecing these characters together through brief faux 'behind the scenes' videos across various platforms, and one two-hour in-character radio broadcast, The Christmas That Goes Wrong, which aired in 2016 and is now only available on the Internet Archive.

(I'm including this link solely for my own future self's reference; this is very much a 'this is of interest to me and only me' piece of media! Do you want to hear Chris Bean and Robert Grove fuck up and play 'Summer Holiday' instead of 'White Christmas' three times? Of course you don't. I do. This is for me. If for some reason you do decide to listen, the programme starts three minutes into the audio file, but I really wouldn't recommend it unless the Goes Wrong universe already has its claws in you.)

I still haven't seen The Play That Goes Wrong itself, which is where most of these characters actually originated. I am, I'll be honest, eyeing up theatre tickets.

Anyway, here are my favourite stupid facts I've gleaned about the members of this fictional drama society from supplemental materials. Actually, now that I double-check, all of these facts are about Robert, my beloved terrible egotistic weirdo. (Why are all of my blorbos the worst? Why can't I ever fall in love with someone nice?)


( Stupid facts about Robert Grove of the Goes Wrong Show. )


My personal favourite bit of supplemental Goes Wrong material I've come across is this stupid two-minute promotional video (Tumblr link) in which Robert is helping Chris try on suits. Extremely weird and homoerotic; single-handedly sent me from 'I'm not really shipping any of these characters' to 'okay, yeah, these two should have absolutely disastrous sex'. Robert may or may not actively be attempting to murder Chris here?

I can't believe my fandom of the moment is The Goes Wrong Show. How on Earth do you write fanfiction for The Goes Wrong Show? It's a show that constantly employs visual comedy, a style of comedy famously unsuited to a non-visual medium, and the main characters are a troupe of actors who we only ever see actively putting on a play, meaning they're in-character most of the time and it's hard to discern the actors' voices.

There's something oddly endearing about how dedicated the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society are, and how relentlessly they press on with the show as everything collapses around them. They always seem to believe that maybe the rest of the play will work out all right. Every line and every prop has been a disaster so far, but surely they can salvage this performance!

One thing I appreciate is that it's not just 'everyone fucks up and forgets their lines', as I originally thought it might be; the actors each have their own distinct set of traits and their own set of challenges. Dennis fucks up and forgets his lines, yes! Trevor, in the background as the stage manager, works very hard but also messes up constantly. But everyone else has different issues.

I'm going to try to pin those issues down, actually, as a characterisation exercise. Sandra plays up to the camera; Max plays up to the audience; Robert, convinced that he's God's gift to the theatre (he's my favourite), constantly feuds with the director and tries to bolster the importance of his roles; Jonathan is actually a solid actor but rarely makes it onto the stage on account of his inability to open doors. Vanessa and Chris would do fine in a less cursed theatre company but respond very badly to things going wrong; she panics and desperately follows the script even when it would be best to deviate, and he gets increasingly livid. Annie is surprisingly solid in this disaster of a theatre company - she's both able to act and able to think on her feet - but she can be a little overdedicated to the role, most notably in 'The Lodge', when she takes playing dead extremely seriously despite the fact that her character was not supposed to be killed.

I'm constantly impressed by these stupid disaster plays. The timing is absolutely extraordinary. I watched Peter Pan Goes Wrong on DVD last night, and I'm reeling from the fact that this show had an actual West End run, given that pretty much the entire set gets wrecked over the course of the play; did they have to destroy it every evening and rebuild it every day? Doing a play that goes wrong must be so much harder than doing a play that goes right!

I was hoping that writing this post might give me some inspiration, but, alas, I still have no idea how one would even start writing The Fic That Goes Wrong. I'm struggling to even think of a concept. They put on a play; it's going too smoothly; it starts to make the cast uncomfortable; they fuck it up on purpose and end up bowing triumphantly in front of the burning set while Chris screams in the background?

Whether I end up writing anything or not, though, I'm having a great time with this ridiculous show! Even if it's a great opportunity for my housemates to mock me, because I find Robert (as played by Henry Lewis) strangely attractive, and he keeps getting cast in such notably unsexy roles as Father Christmas, Adolf Hitler and the family dog.

A fun aspect of getting into The Goes Wrong Show: now, when I trip over or drop something or otherwise mess up, as I frequently do, I can think 'ah, just like my beloved disaster actors,' and somehow it makes everything less frustrating.