#The Goes Wrong Show

[couldtheydefendyouincourt]

[nerdicorntheshipper]

Hate having a blorbo with a normal ass name. I'll see a post and start writing up a 1k word response about how they mischaracterized my boy only to realize that they're talking about a different white man named John. Say what you will about fantasy naming conventions but no one is confused when you talk about blarg the scullcrusher

[princessofwhiteshadows]

[drunkonjazzandwine]

I love this so much, other thoughts I would add

-big yes on max missing his cue for pretty women, with the addition of chris shaving robert’s entire face and head to try and stall. robert looks like an egg now.

-sandra gets stuck in the trunk she hides in during the scene where sweeney kills the beggar woman

-i wonder how the beadles death scene goes though, that can’t possibly be good

okay people here’s a proposition for you that i’ve been thinking about nonstop lately

CORNLEY DOES SWEENEY TODD

if this has been done before i apologize, but i haven’t seen it so i figured i’d compile my thoughts!

i know it’s sondheim. i know they’re not necessarily the most musically inclined (cough cough nativity cough cough) would chris do it anyway? absolutely he would. would it go horribly wrong? obviously.

i’m gonna put the bulk of the text under the cut so i don’t ruin people’s scrolling but if you’re interested i’ve got a LOT written down!

okay initial casting:

- CHRIS is SWEENEY. i think people would roll their eyes at that but he would SO enjoy the drama of it all. he seems a bit too posh for the role but i think with the right stage makeup and a month or so without a haircut he could pull it off. he loves a good descent into madness and wants to try being all broody. his voice isn’t QUITE low enough for it though so they have to pitch up most of the songs a step or two. it’s a pain.

- ANNIE is MRS. LOVETT. i think this casting is absolutely perfect tbh, she would be SO GOOD at the manic, over the top energy and i think she’d love to go a little feral. character voice!! wild physicality!! annie is perfect!! and just imagine the VOCALS. this would probably be the best performance in the show. props to her <3

- SANDRA is JOHANNA. yeah, basic, but it works. obviously sandra can do the whole damsel thing pretty well, but she could probably beg great the bit of madness that johanna falls into in the second act as well! easy casting.

- just as easily, MAX is clearly ANTHONY. sweet, naive boy who’s desperately in love. no deliberation necessary. he’s pure and perfect and definitely plays up the innocence.

- ROBERT is JUDGE TURPIN. i think he can definitely be menacing enough, and would totally enjoy playing opposite chris in this role because he can mess with him a lot.

- DENNIS is the BEADLE. love putting him in a duo with robert, but also i think there are lots of opportunities for comedy with him in this role (see below)

- LUCY is TOBY!!! we got a hint of lucy as little orphan boy in christmas carol and i think she’d do a really good job with this role! it’s the biggest one she’s had with cornley so far and i’m sure she’d be nervous but the audience would ADORE her.

- VANESSA is the BEGGAR WOMAN/LUCY BARKER. this casting has the possibility of either a ridiculously good performance or a VERY awkward one. she’d probably feel very self-conscious about being so unhinged and wild, but hopefully she’d get into more as the show progresses.

- JONATHAN is PIRELLI and JONAS FOGG. i want to see greg tannahill with a silly italian accent and then a silly irish accent. that’s all. also he’d kill it.

- TREVOR is doing all of his wonderful tech stuff and also stands in as a bunch of the people that sweeney kills! and also some other stuff lmao

running bits:

- lots of mishaps with the blood. nothing working the way it’s supposed to. many necks begin spraying blood at the completely wrong times (very much like chris’s unfortunate gunshot bit in harper’s locket). they brush it off as some sort of plague that’s been affecting the whole of london. chris is stained all over with red as early as “worst pies”

- they actually try to make sweeney’s chair-chute work in real time, dropping actors (mainly trevor) directly from the barbershop on the second level into the “basement” of the shop, and it goes pretty badly. almost every time they use it trevor almost gets stuck, and he gets out somehow (occasionally with some smoke or crashes ptgw-elevator style yk yk)

- whenever vanessa as the beggar woman calls out for the beadle, dennis comes on stage, and they keep having to shoo him off

- one member of the ensemble is consistently off tempo by one or two beats, either vocally or with the dance. the music is supposed to feel discordant but this just feels wrong lmao

- there are a lot of delays. sondheim always requires cues to be TIGHT and PRECISE and cornley is consistently off the mark on that. i will elaborate below.

scene by scene:

- opening is decent but chris gets stuck on his entrance or something and so the strings just sorta go for a while and they wait and wait and wait for him to pop out and then he finally does

- at one point during worst pies, something falls off of annie’s costume (a fake eyelash or something) and into the pie she needs to give chris. he sees this. they both panic for a second but the song is so fast that they can’t really take it out

- they get to “if you doubt it take a bite” and just pause and stare at each other in fear and chris slowwwwwly eats it

- the ensuing disgust is genuine

- during “poor thing”, the flashback of his wife is supposed to be recorded and projected on the back of the stage. as it goes with cornley and projectors, something else is shown, ala dennis’s birthday in ccgw, and annie just continues to sing over it

- it’s nothing too horrible, just embarrassing

- maybe somehow the events in the video follow along with the lyrics in an ironic way? i don’t have a specific idea for this yet so lmk if you think of one

- when chris throws his arm up with the razor at the end of “my friends”, the blade goes flying into the audience. screams are heard. they proceed as normal.

- there’s GOTTA be something with the birds after “ah miss”, i don’t have ideas but im sure someone will

- pirelli’s miracle elixir is wild. lucy is doing great but BOTH of her wigs come off with the hat when she has her big reveal, and ends up doing the song about her pin-curled real hair and everyone just goes along with it

- ahhh, classic jonathan moment. during pirelli’s, there’s a little facade with a door that jonathan is supposed to burst out of at the end for the big button. of course, it doesn’t work. he can’t get the door open, everyone waits in silence and watches the knob jiggle. he walks around the side and they all gasp again and carry on

- “ladies and their sensitivities” starts out well but then robert starts singing over the top to be heard, and sandra fights back, and by the end everyone is screaming

- robert is a total pain during pretty women etc

- max gets held up during pretty women somehow and doesn’t burst in when he’s supposed to, chris is waiting to kill turpin but without max’s cue we have a lodge-style “ohhhh im gonna do it” kinda thing and they end up whistling more back and forth until max arrives

- for some reason they make annie run all the way up and down the stairs each time she gets interrupted in “god that’s good.” her frustration with sweeney and her total exhaustion is not false.

- dennis parlor songs. say no more.

- of course, there has to be a moment where vanessa is forced to improvise. i’d go with one of her little crazy lullabies being dragged out because the music cuts off (during the end of city on fire, maybe?) and she has to come up with more wild babble and it’s so uncomfortable for everyone lmao

- during “by the sea,” they try to have a silly little dream sequence of the beach with puppets of seagulls and fish. i’ll let you use your imagination there.

- similar to pretty women, robert keeps adding to the ending scene so chris can’t kill him. something like:

- “the face of a barber, the face of a prisoner isn’t memorable” or whatever the line is

- “it really isn’t. who are you?”

- long, frustrated chris bean pause. “…surely you know me, sir.”

- “not at all.”

- “benjamin barker?”

- “you certainly look like a barker. shave your own face for once, dog.”

- “robert—“

- “is that your name? i’ve never met a robert, sir.”

- and so on and so forth until chris just walks over and does the throat slit without the cue

- when vanessa is supposed to go down the chute at the end as lucy’s body, she gets stuck and annie pulls trevor out in a bad wig as a stand-in body for chris to weep over. robert is supposed to fall out of the chute still in the process of dying, but he gets stuck behind vanessa and just makes agonized noises from inside the chute. it makes for a very strange image. he continues to make these noises throughout the scene after he’s supposed to be fully dead, and it undercuts the drama quite a bit.

- i’m sure there’s more but i’m too excited to share this so i’m gonna cut myself off there, please reblog with any of your own thoughts!

[abcwordsurge]

I love to watch the goes wrong show when I'm having a bad day because no matter what kind of day I'm having, chris bean is having a worse one

[cadyrocks]

Play of the Week! A new play, performed live, every week, in front of a live studio audience. How wrong could it go?

Okay, I gotta talk about The Goes Wrong Show.

The Goes Wrong Show is something I'm surprised Tumblr hasn't been more up in arms about. This website is, after all, all about committing to the bit. A popular text post by @linecoveredinjellyfish proposed the school of media criticism called "Bitism". And buddy, lemme tell you, The Goes Wrong Show is the patron saint of Bitism. They commit to the bit harder than an alcoholic horse who recently found protestant Jesus.

And it is the funniest goddamn thing I have ever seen.

As is so often the case, writing a review of a very good comedy is hard - it's not easy to talk about it without taking some of the oomph out of the jokes. And, make no mistake, The Goes Wrong Show is an incredibly good comedy. I'll try my best anyways, because I cannot stop recommending it, but if you don't need more convincing, just go watch an episode. It's incredible.

Our framing device is a series of weekly plays put on by an unbelievably incompetent and eclectic drama society, where anything can and probably will fuck up horribly. Terrible acting? A horrific script? Broken props? A set mistakenly built at a 90-degree angle? You name it, they found a way to fuck it up.

But. And this is the key thing. They commit. The script calls for a scene involving pouring tea in a set that's oriented completely wrong? Commit to the bit.

The script demands a period piece family dinner, but something is very wrong with the ceiling fan?

Commit. To. The. Bit.

Major actor in the piece is completely incompetent?

Commit.

To.

The.

Bit.

It's an Airplane!-esque barrage of constant absurd gags, and I don't say that lightly. Each member of the cast is distinctly deranged in their own unique ways, the stage management is woefully incompetent, and the special effects are really just a special kind of fucked.

Really, the only complaint I can make of this show is that there isn't more of it, and frankly that's a good problem to have! If you're the kind of person who's not too busy to read a long Tumblr fandom post, but is too busy to binge a series you can get through in an evening, just give s1e3, "A Trial To Watch", a look - in my humble opinion, it is incredibly hard to top.

[befickleforever]

THE PILOT (NOT THE PILOT)

[not-mary-sue]

You know what's funny? Dennis actually can learn lines, he just can't learn HIS lines. In Peter Pan, he defaults to Chris's line after losing his assistance. In Christmas Carol, he's delivering Scrooge's lines along with Chris without skipping a beat, but can't remember the line 'no' without it being written in front of him. In The Trial, he knows both the lines Vanessa is supposed to say after him, as well as Robert's. If you gave Dennis a script he would probably be able to recite the whole thing apart from his own characters.

[cornleypolytechnicgoeswrong]

Subtle foreshadowing

[quinnigallagherjones]

movie night with buffy [13/?]

⤷ peter pan goes wrong (2016)

i'm terribly sorry ladies and gentlemen, but we seem to have a slight difficulty here, many of you may have noticed, peter pan took a rather nasty unrehearsed fall there

[chrisbeansprmanager]

[bi4pan-polls]

Poll: Finale

[ju-nebugg]

more More MORE

[stars-irises]

More cornley polytechnic drama society text posts (this time not only Robert) because these are ridiculously fun to make

[sedlex]

The most realistic depiction of a printer

[lovemewednesdays]

Where be my man-penis?!