The Goes Wrong Show - Season 1

Our players present the story of Santa and his elves attempting to bring happiness to a sad little girl and her constantly fighting parents. Can the magical toy machine restore her Christmas cheer? Or perhaps Mr Snowman and his enchanting dance? We'll never know, as a surly Santa indulges in too much Christmas sherry and contrives to ruin everything. Crackers explode, an elf is trapped in a confined space, and the toy machine attempts to eat the snowman alive. Also, there are songs, and these don't go well.

This week Cornley have chosen to put on a Second World War drama, rarely performed because of its historical inaccuracy and poor research. Director Chris plays Rufus Heal, a dashing pilot reduced to a desk job cracking German codes in a top secret Allied facility after losing his leg. He is assisted by uptight Englishwoman Valerie Sky and French codebreaker Camille, under the watchful eye of Wing Commander Wickham. They also find a part suitable for Dennis's dubious skills - a telegraph machine. Will they crack the code and unmask the spy in their midst in time to win the Vietnam war? Sadly for our gang, many disasters await - Rufus's ‘lost' leg won't behave itself, Camille's grasp of French is sub-par, Hitler spends more time on set than planned, and Annie is forced to play the dastardly Wing Commander after Chris's father fails to show up. And the telegraph machine takes on a life of its own.

A legal drama this week for our intrepid performers, with Dennis taking on a lead role due to a conversation with his grandmother that turned out to be legally binding. He plays unscrupulous defence lawyer Karl McKennon, taking on his ex-wife Becky as he defends an ex-cop accused of murdering his brother. Cornley Dramatic Society's designers have excelled themselves, constructing a number of split sets that are wheeled in and out to create the locations described in the brutal cross examinations that take place in their meticulously recreated courtroom. Sadly, this turns out to be a terrible idea: sets are mismatched, wheeled off and on at life-threatening speeds, and the courtroom itself is a quarter the size it should have been.

This week's show is a family saga of lust and betrayal set in the American Deep South, as the children of Herb Burgess, the head of Burgess Fine Tea, gather to plan the division of the business after their father's incipient demise. The show's title refers to the heat in Tennessee, but a designer error means that one of the sets has been built at a literal ninety degrees to the vertical. Too expensive to rebuild, our gang decide to turn the cameras on their side and pretend that everything's normal. Gravity, however, has other ideas, and when even getting in and out of chairs is potentially limb-threatening, you know things aren't going well. That's not the only problem, however, as a remote-controlled dog falls victim to a spat between Chris and Robert, rogue jack-in-a-boxes crop up on set, and Herb's bedroom has somehow ended up upside down.