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rionaleonhart) wrote2026-02-19 11:12 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2026-02-19 11:12 pm
Entry tags:
Fanfiction: Cast and Crew (The Goes Wrong Show)
I keep thinking 'okay, I must be out of Goes Wrong ideas now' and then writing more! After seeing The Play That Goes Wrong, I'm really curious about how awkward things were between Annie and the rest of the drama society afterwards.
Title: Cast and Crew
Fandom: The Play That Goes Wrong
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1,800
Summary: In The Murder at Haversham Manor, Annie finds her calling; she wants to be an actress. After the events of the play, though, her relationship with the drama society might be a little strained.
Predictably, all the bloody actors bugger off the moment the curtain falls on The Murder at Haversham Manor, leaving the stage management team to deal with the cleanup. Having been forced into playing Florence Colleymore against his will, Trevor feels he should really get the same privileges as the actors; Annie definitely should. But apparently not.
“That was a shitshow, wasn’t it?” he asks.
“Really?” Annie asks. “I thought it went pretty well.”
“Thanks for staying to help, anyway,” Trevor says. “Thought you might be above us lowly backstage people now.”
Annie shakes her head, hard. “Oh, I’d never look down on the team. Everything would fall apart without us.”
Trevor takes a pointed look around the wreckage-strewn stage.
“I... miiiiiight be leaving the backstage crew, though,” Annie admits. “I think maybe I’m meant to be an actor.”
“Traitor,” Trevor says, lightly. “Thought we might be losing you, after all that. Good luck, then.”
“You’re not meant to say good luck,” Annie says. “You’re meant to say break a leg.”
“All right, then, break a leg.” Christ. The way things played out on stage today, she probably will.
-
“I want to act.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want to be an actor,” Annie says. “In the drama society.”
Chris looks at her for a moment. “You – I’m sorry, remind me of your name?”
God. Actors. Why does she even want to be one of them? “It’s Annie.”
“Annie,” Chris says. “You’re asking to join the drama society? After what you did to my play?”
Annie folds her arms. “Oi, I saved your play. You’d be lucky to have me.”
“Saved my play?” Chris echoes. “I don’t imagine you’re aware of this, given your complete unfamiliarity with the script, but The Murder at Haversham Manor does not include two Florences Colleymore locked in mortal combat.”
“It definitely has one Florence Colleymore,” Annie points out, “and you wouldn’t have had one half the time without me. You said in your little speech to the audience that you never have enough actors, right? Here I am. I’m an actor.”
Chris opens his mouth. Frowns. Closes it again.
“What if you want to put on a play that has more than one woman in it?” Annie asks. “I’ve heard they exist, you know.”
Chris closes his eyes for a moment. Sighs, deeply.
“We could use more actresses,” he concedes, opening his eyes again.
Annie brightens. “Right?”
“You did attempt to murder our existing actress on stage, though,” Chris says. “Fairly earnestly. I’ll need some assurance that that won’t happen again, or we’ll be back to just one actress in the company.”
“I wasn’t trying to murder her,” Annie says. “She was just... she was just a problem.”
“Right,” Chris says. “Well, problems between our actors do arise sometimes, but we generally find plays go smoother if we try to beat each other unconscious only as a last resort.”
Annie hesitates. She’s... yeah, she’s not entirely proud of everything she did on that stage. “All right. I’ll remember that.”
Chris looks at her for a long moment.
“That’s all I can ask for, I suppose,” he says at last. He reaches out to shake her hand. “Welcome aboard.”
-
Sandra is living in campus accommodation; Annie gets her door number from Chris. This is a conversation she’d sooner not have. But, if they’re going to be working together on stage, they probably need to clear the air.
Sandra opens the door. Stares.
“Um,” Annie says. “Hello.”
“I suppose you’re here to kill me and take my place,” Sandra says.
“I mean, I am going to be in your place,” Annie says. “No, um, in your plays, I mean. N-not because I’ve killed you. Um. I’m joining the drama society, as an actor.”
Sandra raises a perfectly trimmed eyebrow. “Are you indeed?”
Annie’s trying to find the right words for this. She can’t.
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out. “I shouldn’t – I shouldn’t have attacked you. I was just... I was having such an amazing time.”
Sandra’s other eyebrow joins the first, her expression softening into surprise.
“I loved it,” Annie says. “On the stage. I didn’t want to give it up. I, er, I’m sorry I... punched you and scratched you and hit you over the head and, er, tied you up.”
“And tried to upstage me,” Sandra prompts.
She’s a little less sorry for that. “That, too.”
“It does feel good,” Sandra says. “Being in front of an audience.” She pauses. “If you’re hoping to play romantic leads, we might have a problem.”
“I don’t have to be the lead,” Annie says. “I’ll play anything. I just want to be on that stage. But...” She shrugs. “If I think I’d be good as the romantic lead, I’m still gonna audition.”
Sandra narrows her eyes. “Oh, so it’s a competition, then.”
They look at each other for a moment. Annie’s not going to back down. She’ll apologise for what she did on that stage; she won’t apologise for applying for roles fair and square.
At last, unexpectedly, Sandra laughs. “All right. Some competition could be fun, actually. No more playing the same part, though.”
Annie nods, fervently. “I’ll be more normal about getting parts from now on. I promise.”
Sandra smiles a little. “It was getting a little exhausting, having to play every female role. Little Women was a disaster.”
-
“I hear you’re moving into the performance sphere,” Robert comments, taking a seat across from Annie in the polytechnic cafeteria. “It’s good to see you branching out into something more worthwhile than stage management.”
Annie arches her eyebrows. “More worthwhile?”
“Your acting is dire, though. I will expect you to take my ten-week acting course, at the very reasonable cost of—”
Annie shakes her head. “Sorry, can’t afford it.”
“Can’t afford it?” Robert asks. “I haven’t told you how much it is yet.”
“Is it more than two quid a week?”
Robert bristles. “Two pounds? I’m offering you personal acting coaching from a genuine near-professional; do you have any idea how much that’s worth?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Annie says. “I’m not working with a big budget, you know. Do you have any idea how hard the stage management team works?”
Robert folds his arms. Contemplates Annie for a moment.
“It’s an investment, I suppose,” he says at last. “The better one’s sub-actors are, the better the overall production looks and the brighter one’s own acting can shine. I’d like you to take my ten-week acting course, for the very reasonable price of two pounds per week.”
“One fifty,” Annie says.
Robert bares his teeth. “Fine.”
-
“Before we start today’s drama society meeting, I’d like to welcome a new member,” Chris says. “Well, a new member of the cast, at least. You all know Annie as part of the stage management team, but she’s now joining us as an actor.”
Dennis frowns. “Wait, I thought she was already an actor.”
Chris shakes his head. “Some of you may already have heard about it, but this is a new development.”
“No, you were definitely an actor before,” Dennis says. “You acted with us. In the murder mystery. Right?”
Annie catches Sandra’s eye. It’s mildly uncomfortable.
“You were really good,” Dennis adds.
Annie has to try very, very hard not to smile at that. You’re probably not supposed to accept praise for a performance if you dragged the role’s original owner through a window and bludgeoned her with a tray.
Still. It feels pretty good.
“She was not ‘really good’,” Chris says, shattering the moment. “She caused an enormous distraction at the climax of the play, and she is being allowed into the cast only on the understanding that it will not happen again.”
Annie’s stomach drops. “I, um. Sorry, everyone. I know I shouldn’t have—”
“That’s not a very welcoming welcome, is it?” Max asks. “I loved the big fight. I thought it was hilarious.”
The look Chris, Robert and Sandra instantly turn on him is so icy that Annie feels the chill of it, even when it’s not directed her way. But it does, at least, mean that the focus is no longer on her.
Thanks, she mouths to Max.
Max gives her a smile and a quick wink, and then faces his castmates like a man facing a firing squad.
-
Jonathan hurries to catch up with Annie after the meeting. “You’re leaving the backstage team?”
“I had fun with it,” Annie says, with a shrug. “But I think I’ve found my calling.”
“Oh,” Jonathan says. He looks worried.
“What’s wrong?” Annie asks.
“Nothing. Just... if you’re not on the backstage team, does that mean you won’t be oiling the door hinges any more?”
Weirdly specific question. “Um, I suppose someone else’ll probably do it.”
“I have... problems, sometimes,” Jonathan says. “With doors. But I’ve been fine with you on the team. I mean, I could open the door in Murder at Haversham Manor, right? You saw that?”
Problems with doors? What does that mean?
“Sorry,” Jonathan says. “This... probably sounds ridiculous. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
-
All things considered, it’s a strange, slightly hostile entry to the cast. Maybe that can’t be helped. If you kick off your acting career by assaulting the leading lady in front of the audience, yeah, some of your new castmates might have complicated feelings about you being there.
Annie’s determined to make their next performance a success; maybe that’ll win them over.
Their next performance is a disaster, in spite of Annie putting on, if she says so herself, a blinding performance as Emilia. Honestly, with this cast, any effort at Othello was probably doomed from the start; she’s just glad no one tried to fix the problems with makeup.
“Outrageous of them to boo the Bard,” Robert comments, as they leave the stage.
Annie clears her throat. “I’m not sure they were booing—”
“Anyway,” Robert says, slinging an unexpected arm around Annie’s shoulders, “that was considerably better than your turn as Florence Colleymore. My acting lessons are evidently paying off.”
“Thanks,” Annie says, a little startled.
She actually knew the part this time, too. That probably helped.
“Hey.” Sandra comes up beside Annie, nudges her lightly with an elbow. “Good work staying in character when the whole rope thing happened. I couldn’t have done it. She was good, right, Chris?”
“That was impressive,” Chris concedes. “It’s just... well. A shame about the circumstances. And, indeed, everything else. We probably shouldn’t do that one again.”
It hadn’t been easy, remembering her lines while dangling by her ankle from the rigging. It’s good to be recognised for it.
It’s the first time Annie’s really felt like part of the cast, in the way she used to feel like part of the crew. Walking away from the sound of booing, licking their wounds, finding the things that went right in the sea of things that... probably could have gone better. However they got here, whatever castmates they may or may not have attacked in their unexpected debuts, they all just went through that three-hour nightmare together.
She’s already looking forward to the next one.
Title: Cast and Crew
Fandom: The Play That Goes Wrong
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1,800
Summary: In The Murder at Haversham Manor, Annie finds her calling; she wants to be an actress. After the events of the play, though, her relationship with the drama society might be a little strained.
Predictably, all the bloody actors bugger off the moment the curtain falls on The Murder at Haversham Manor, leaving the stage management team to deal with the cleanup. Having been forced into playing Florence Colleymore against his will, Trevor feels he should really get the same privileges as the actors; Annie definitely should. But apparently not.
“That was a shitshow, wasn’t it?” he asks.
“Really?” Annie asks. “I thought it went pretty well.”
“Thanks for staying to help, anyway,” Trevor says. “Thought you might be above us lowly backstage people now.”
Annie shakes her head, hard. “Oh, I’d never look down on the team. Everything would fall apart without us.”
Trevor takes a pointed look around the wreckage-strewn stage.
“I... miiiiiight be leaving the backstage crew, though,” Annie admits. “I think maybe I’m meant to be an actor.”
“Traitor,” Trevor says, lightly. “Thought we might be losing you, after all that. Good luck, then.”
“You’re not meant to say good luck,” Annie says. “You’re meant to say break a leg.”
“All right, then, break a leg.” Christ. The way things played out on stage today, she probably will.
“I want to act.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want to be an actor,” Annie says. “In the drama society.”
Chris looks at her for a moment. “You – I’m sorry, remind me of your name?”
God. Actors. Why does she even want to be one of them? “It’s Annie.”
“Annie,” Chris says. “You’re asking to join the drama society? After what you did to my play?”
Annie folds her arms. “Oi, I saved your play. You’d be lucky to have me.”
“Saved my play?” Chris echoes. “I don’t imagine you’re aware of this, given your complete unfamiliarity with the script, but The Murder at Haversham Manor does not include two Florences Colleymore locked in mortal combat.”
“It definitely has one Florence Colleymore,” Annie points out, “and you wouldn’t have had one half the time without me. You said in your little speech to the audience that you never have enough actors, right? Here I am. I’m an actor.”
Chris opens his mouth. Frowns. Closes it again.
“What if you want to put on a play that has more than one woman in it?” Annie asks. “I’ve heard they exist, you know.”
Chris closes his eyes for a moment. Sighs, deeply.
“We could use more actresses,” he concedes, opening his eyes again.
Annie brightens. “Right?”
“You did attempt to murder our existing actress on stage, though,” Chris says. “Fairly earnestly. I’ll need some assurance that that won’t happen again, or we’ll be back to just one actress in the company.”
“I wasn’t trying to murder her,” Annie says. “She was just... she was just a problem.”
“Right,” Chris says. “Well, problems between our actors do arise sometimes, but we generally find plays go smoother if we try to beat each other unconscious only as a last resort.”
Annie hesitates. She’s... yeah, she’s not entirely proud of everything she did on that stage. “All right. I’ll remember that.”
Chris looks at her for a long moment.
“That’s all I can ask for, I suppose,” he says at last. He reaches out to shake her hand. “Welcome aboard.”
Sandra is living in campus accommodation; Annie gets her door number from Chris. This is a conversation she’d sooner not have. But, if they’re going to be working together on stage, they probably need to clear the air.
Sandra opens the door. Stares.
“Um,” Annie says. “Hello.”
“I suppose you’re here to kill me and take my place,” Sandra says.
“I mean, I am going to be in your place,” Annie says. “No, um, in your plays, I mean. N-not because I’ve killed you. Um. I’m joining the drama society, as an actor.”
Sandra raises a perfectly trimmed eyebrow. “Are you indeed?”
Annie’s trying to find the right words for this. She can’t.
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out. “I shouldn’t – I shouldn’t have attacked you. I was just... I was having such an amazing time.”
Sandra’s other eyebrow joins the first, her expression softening into surprise.
“I loved it,” Annie says. “On the stage. I didn’t want to give it up. I, er, I’m sorry I... punched you and scratched you and hit you over the head and, er, tied you up.”
“And tried to upstage me,” Sandra prompts.
She’s a little less sorry for that. “That, too.”
“It does feel good,” Sandra says. “Being in front of an audience.” She pauses. “If you’re hoping to play romantic leads, we might have a problem.”
“I don’t have to be the lead,” Annie says. “I’ll play anything. I just want to be on that stage. But...” She shrugs. “If I think I’d be good as the romantic lead, I’m still gonna audition.”
Sandra narrows her eyes. “Oh, so it’s a competition, then.”
They look at each other for a moment. Annie’s not going to back down. She’ll apologise for what she did on that stage; she won’t apologise for applying for roles fair and square.
At last, unexpectedly, Sandra laughs. “All right. Some competition could be fun, actually. No more playing the same part, though.”
Annie nods, fervently. “I’ll be more normal about getting parts from now on. I promise.”
Sandra smiles a little. “It was getting a little exhausting, having to play every female role. Little Women was a disaster.”
“I hear you’re moving into the performance sphere,” Robert comments, taking a seat across from Annie in the polytechnic cafeteria. “It’s good to see you branching out into something more worthwhile than stage management.”
Annie arches her eyebrows. “More worthwhile?”
“Your acting is dire, though. I will expect you to take my ten-week acting course, at the very reasonable cost of—”
Annie shakes her head. “Sorry, can’t afford it.”
“Can’t afford it?” Robert asks. “I haven’t told you how much it is yet.”
“Is it more than two quid a week?”
Robert bristles. “Two pounds? I’m offering you personal acting coaching from a genuine near-professional; do you have any idea how much that’s worth?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Annie says. “I’m not working with a big budget, you know. Do you have any idea how hard the stage management team works?”
Robert folds his arms. Contemplates Annie for a moment.
“It’s an investment, I suppose,” he says at last. “The better one’s sub-actors are, the better the overall production looks and the brighter one’s own acting can shine. I’d like you to take my ten-week acting course, for the very reasonable price of two pounds per week.”
“One fifty,” Annie says.
Robert bares his teeth. “Fine.”
“Before we start today’s drama society meeting, I’d like to welcome a new member,” Chris says. “Well, a new member of the cast, at least. You all know Annie as part of the stage management team, but she’s now joining us as an actor.”
Dennis frowns. “Wait, I thought she was already an actor.”
Chris shakes his head. “Some of you may already have heard about it, but this is a new development.”
“No, you were definitely an actor before,” Dennis says. “You acted with us. In the murder mystery. Right?”
Annie catches Sandra’s eye. It’s mildly uncomfortable.
“You were really good,” Dennis adds.
Annie has to try very, very hard not to smile at that. You’re probably not supposed to accept praise for a performance if you dragged the role’s original owner through a window and bludgeoned her with a tray.
Still. It feels pretty good.
“She was not ‘really good’,” Chris says, shattering the moment. “She caused an enormous distraction at the climax of the play, and she is being allowed into the cast only on the understanding that it will not happen again.”
Annie’s stomach drops. “I, um. Sorry, everyone. I know I shouldn’t have—”
“That’s not a very welcoming welcome, is it?” Max asks. “I loved the big fight. I thought it was hilarious.”
The look Chris, Robert and Sandra instantly turn on him is so icy that Annie feels the chill of it, even when it’s not directed her way. But it does, at least, mean that the focus is no longer on her.
Thanks, she mouths to Max.
Max gives her a smile and a quick wink, and then faces his castmates like a man facing a firing squad.
Jonathan hurries to catch up with Annie after the meeting. “You’re leaving the backstage team?”
“I had fun with it,” Annie says, with a shrug. “But I think I’ve found my calling.”
“Oh,” Jonathan says. He looks worried.
“What’s wrong?” Annie asks.
“Nothing. Just... if you’re not on the backstage team, does that mean you won’t be oiling the door hinges any more?”
Weirdly specific question. “Um, I suppose someone else’ll probably do it.”
“I have... problems, sometimes,” Jonathan says. “With doors. But I’ve been fine with you on the team. I mean, I could open the door in Murder at Haversham Manor, right? You saw that?”
Problems with doors? What does that mean?
“Sorry,” Jonathan says. “This... probably sounds ridiculous. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
All things considered, it’s a strange, slightly hostile entry to the cast. Maybe that can’t be helped. If you kick off your acting career by assaulting the leading lady in front of the audience, yeah, some of your new castmates might have complicated feelings about you being there.
Annie’s determined to make their next performance a success; maybe that’ll win them over.
Their next performance is a disaster, in spite of Annie putting on, if she says so herself, a blinding performance as Emilia. Honestly, with this cast, any effort at Othello was probably doomed from the start; she’s just glad no one tried to fix the problems with makeup.
“Outrageous of them to boo the Bard,” Robert comments, as they leave the stage.
Annie clears her throat. “I’m not sure they were booing—”
“Anyway,” Robert says, slinging an unexpected arm around Annie’s shoulders, “that was considerably better than your turn as Florence Colleymore. My acting lessons are evidently paying off.”
“Thanks,” Annie says, a little startled.
She actually knew the part this time, too. That probably helped.
“Hey.” Sandra comes up beside Annie, nudges her lightly with an elbow. “Good work staying in character when the whole rope thing happened. I couldn’t have done it. She was good, right, Chris?”
“That was impressive,” Chris concedes. “It’s just... well. A shame about the circumstances. And, indeed, everything else. We probably shouldn’t do that one again.”
It hadn’t been easy, remembering her lines while dangling by her ankle from the rigging. It’s good to be recognised for it.
It’s the first time Annie’s really felt like part of the cast, in the way she used to feel like part of the crew. Walking away from the sound of booing, licking their wounds, finding the things that went right in the sea of things that... probably could have gone better. However they got here, whatever castmates they may or may not have attacked in their unexpected debuts, they all just went through that three-hour nightmare together.
She’s already looking forward to the next one.
no subject
Ironic wording!
Maybe the play would be more famous if it did, though, Chris! Did you ever think about that?
"If you want to join, you have to promise no more attempted murder!" Chris has standards!
Annie did not make the best first impression with Sandra!
Good standard to have, Annie! Competing fairly for professional opportunities is okay, violently attacking other actors is not!
I was going to say it's worth two pounds, but it turns out it's only worth one-fifty.
Aw, Dennis!
Oh no, Jonathan!
"How did Othello go?"
"No one did blackface!"
"...good? Like how was it as a play, though? Did it go well?"
"No one did blackface!"
Oh, she's got the right skills for this!