*SPOILER WARNING FOR CHRISTMAS CAROL GOES WRONG UK TOUR*
I Present to you my barely understandable ramblings of a techie who has many thoughts about the production of Christmas Carol Goes Wrong touring the UK.
*IM BEING SO SERIOUS IM GONNA PUT THIS POST UNDER THE CUT PLEASE DON'T CLICK ON THIS UNLESS YOU DONT MIND SPOILERS FOR CHRISTMAS CAROL GOES WRONG THEY AREN'T HUGE SPOILERS BUT I DO MENTION SPECIFIC JOKES, RUNNING BITS AND MOMENTS THAT I DON'T WANT TO RUIN FOR YOU, COME BACK WHEN YOU HAVE SEEN THE SHOW OR ARE CONFIDENT YOU DON'T MIND ANY SPOILERS OK LOVE YOU <3*
So @dearest-darlingest asked me to expand on my comment about the tech so here I am.
I'd like to preface this by saying every single mischief show is immensely technical and the amount of tech that has to go right for the show to 'go wrong' is immense. However, to me, CCGW feels like the tech is much more a background character and when I say it was more impressive I mean from the perspective of what makes typical tech impressive (smooth, unnoticed, polished) rather than the impressiveness from being able to correctly and safely go 'wrong'. I cannot express enough how impressive any mischief tech is and the time and effort that goes into making it that way.
Anyway, disclaimer done I felt like CCGW relied a lot less on the technical things going wrong (there was no collapsing sets, no wrong sound cues, no lighting the wrong person) and a lot more on the characters making mistakes (Dennis still doesn't know his lines, Robert is constantly trying to kill Chris etc etc). The show as a whole focused a lot more on the characters than previous mischief shows have, where this time the first half of act 1 was them preparing for the performance, then the performance happens and then the final bit of act 2 is the aftermath of the performance. I felt like it fit really well with the shift in how things go wrong.
The sets were so so impressive they were gorgeous and it was amazing to see mischief get to take up such a huge stage with huge set pieces being flown in or being moved around onstage. There was some gorgeous use of gauze using lighting to make it opaque or transparent (one of my fave set design techniques - ask me about my hamlet design I dare you 😳) and a backdrop cloth was used for a goes wrong gag in which it is flown down too far, exposing Trevor's tech box with the hemp fly ropes which he realises and flies the cloth back out, this was one of the really few moments that was a tech mistake but (humble brag) as someone who has used the Lowry fly system (it's counterweight for anyone interested) being able to fly in time with Trevor onstage is a feat in itself.
The major set goes wrong moment was again focused on the mistake of the cornley gang, where they break the model box and try and fix it in their own cornley way, hide the box from Chris and send it off to the set constructors. They later get a phone call from the constructors asking if they want them to make the set exactly as it is in the model box, Chris is like 'yeah obviously that's the point of the model box' so later on when the set is....not what it should be, it's explicitly because of the character's - if Chris had taken a moment to question why the set construction crew were asking this instead of just getting angry then this problem wouldn't have happened. Though despite being 'wrong' the set itself was beautifully made and so detailed I loved it so much.
Perhaps the only other actual tech 'goes wrong' was a running gag about the lights falling off the rig which again - dropping fake lights from the rig is something you don't get to see often and was really well done (though I heard through the grapevine these were a pain to get right in tech rehearsals)
There was a big moment where a van crashes through the back wall of the set which was technically really impressive and I don't think was something I've seen mischief do before and again was supposed to be 'in world' - the character actually drove the van through the wall.
Another tech moment was Dennis swapping putting the fake snow in the rig and the coins in the purse leading to coins raining down on the stage which is something I've never seen before and made the loveliest sound for the solid 30 seconds they fell for.
To me as a techie with a stage management bias I was just obsessed with the scene changes they were really quite complicated with a lot of big set pieces and props moving around with hydraulic breaks and it was really lovely to get to see the beauty of well organised stage management amongst the chaos of Cornley shows, a few times stage management members actually added to the ensemble background acting and they wore costumes too which was cute and like during one quick scene change they moved the set piece off and an asm came on stage to wipe up some fake 'wine' that was spilt as a joke in the previous scene and it was just beautifully smooth, how I love stage management.
I also have to say the lighting design felt much more theatrical than regular Cornley shows, it was really beautiful and sophisticated and the scene changes had these fun blue-outs with gobos and some movement effects and it made the scene changes feel so much cooler. Interestingly the Lx designer (David Howe) didn't design TPTGW (Ric Mountjoy) Or PPGW (Matthew Haskins) but he did design Comedy about a Bank Robbery, Magic goes Wrong, mind mangler, good luck studio & mischief movie night which maybe gives you more of an idea of the lx style for CCGW compared to the likes of TPTGW.
There was also some really cool uses of puppetry in the show which I wasn't expecting! There was a giant inflatable creepy doll toy with these huge inflatable hands that added to the (I hate to sound pretentious) theatricality of the show and truly came out of nowhere giving extreme Mr Blobby vibes (iykyk 👀) and getting to see the Ghost of Christmas yet to come onstage was also really fun.
I do wonder what world they live in sometimes tho cause there is a scene where Robert says he's gonna turn his mic down whilst he's onstage and accidentally turns it up to loudly say a private comment which I do find an interesting implication if he's operating his own microphone 😭 similarly the set changes include sound and lights which realistically wouldn't exist because the set constructor/carpenter wouldn't be installing the sound system they would be building the visuals of the set and working with lx and sound for any additional bits
I will also say that at one point Trevor falls onto a 4 poster bed and in the show I saw he fell onto the curtain which actually pulled the top bar of the bed down and broke it in half, but it was fixed by the next scene! And the Ghost of Christmas yet to Come drops his skeleton hand at one point and this time he accidentally got it caught on the puppet's wig and was swaying back and forth with the hand swinging from the hair it was so funny and I had confirmation from a friend that this didn't happen at the showing they saw a couple days earlier.
Overall it did just feel like mischief got a chance to explore a few avenues they haven't really explored yet? And the focus on the characters being the things going wrong kinda helped prevent it from feeling stale?? I feel like after you've watched so many things of like...set pieces breaking, the wrong sound cue being played, the flying going wrong it's easy to see them as cheap laughs (still funny but perhaps more predictable or less rooted in the story?) but it really felt like they revamped the whole cornley 'goes wrong' thing and it felt SUPER fresh again even after TPTGW, PPGW, ACCGW, and TGWS.
Anyway if anyone has any thoughts themselves or has any questions/wants more details feel free to ask me or drop your own thoughts, I love talking about tech more than anything in the world hehe
