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It all begins with the coup.
That is to say, really, that it all begins with the coup’s end: Robert’s authority in shambles, the set in tatters, the audience in stitches. And, of course, Chris finally ending his stint of vengeful hovering in the wings to enter the proverbial stage and reclaim his title as director, surrounded by relieved. erstwhile actors.
He did make them all come crawling back, though.
Chris knew from the start his society would regret ousting him as director soon enough, which was the only thing that kept him going through the dark nights of Robert-directed ignominy. But even if he knew he’d be back as soon as they asked, they didn’t. So Chris, admittedly, milked the tension for all it was worth.
Trevor gruffly bought him a pint; Max sent him an email that was forwarded from so many mistaken email accounts that the text was barely legible; Annie baked him a cake; Sandra showed up to his flat still in her backup dress (unfortunately a fluffy white affair) and wailed hysterically in his doorway until his elderly neighbour came out and lambasted him for ‘leaving this poor girl in the lurch.’
Chris had let the others redeem themselves with words instead of actions, after that. He wouldn’t put it past Dennis to show up at his door all wet-eyed. Mr Karapatikis already thought he was some kind of ingénue-seducing rake; he didn’t want the man to think he was also in the habit of kicking stray dogs.
The last holdout was Jonathan, but that turned out to be because he’d missed so many rehearsals that he didn’t realise Robert had replaced him as director at all.
And Robert, of course, did not come grovelling on bended knee, but it’s not like Chris had expected him to. Besides, that would take all the savour out of his smug retribution - Chris tries, truly he does, to rise above petty sniping, but he’s only human. He justifies not giving Robert any lines in their next play as a necessary harshness to ensure the Society won’t be distracted with silly politicking again, and quietly enjoys Robert’s exaggerated grimaces of disgust in rehearsals.
Frankly, it’s not surprising when Robert hijacks The Most Lamentable Tragedy of the Prince of England and His Long Lost Twin Brother, Prince Regent of France and the Problems Therein Experienced by All When they came to Know of One Another after a Battle, but it is troubling. Perhaps Chris had been too blinded by his own personal grievances to really listen to his actors. Perhaps the Society has been suffering as a result.
Finally, reluctantly, he resolves to improve communications within their troupe.
Attempt one, the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Festival, goes wrong so spectacularly that the BBC representative present ended up getting arrested for abusive language towards a police member (yes, the police were called - Chris wasn’t there for that bit, he was in the hospital having his eyes rinsed). Clearly he overcorrected with that one. Listening should not be taking place in public, apparently.
The less said of attempt two, the better. Chris had tried to hold a discussion night of sorts, get members’ feedback and take suggestions, but a mixup between similarly-named but geographically distant buildings meant the only people present were him, and - inexplicably - Jonathan.
So this is attempt three. It is not public and there are no logistics to present challenges. A week ago, Chris announced to the Society that he was taking script submissions, and expected them to write him a play that would do Cornley proud.
(Or at least not get them all arrested.)
He’d pick one, they’d perform it, everyone would feel like they contributed, and Robert could stop sulking in the corner plotting to usurp him again.
Chris truly doesn’t believe he’s a naive person, but in retrospect, this was not one of his best ideas. For one thing, he let Robert of all people be the one to collect the submissions - when the man had volunteered, he'd thought perhaps he was turning over a new leaf in light of his crushing failure as director. Instead, Robert came by yesterday with the scripts - an impressively large pile - attempted to browbeat him into a lead role in an as-yet unknown play, and then left in a cloud of grandiosity and disdain.
Today, Chris started his work on reading through the fruits of his company’s labours. It’s a new era for Cornley, he had thought, and began.
And all of that, inevitably, has led him to this point: sitting at his desk, script in hand, and hissing down the line in an unfortunately familiar manner. It doesn’t matter if it’s face to face, or over a telephone line; Robert’s always the same in an argument.
Namely: a blockheaded lunatic with all the vocal regulation of an ungreased wheel.
“Robert,” he demands.
Below him, spread out in a disturbingly thick sheaf, is the script for Catsaret. It’s signed by Annie’s familiar bubbly writing, below which in slightly larger letters reads: Light yet CRUCIAL editing by ROBERT GROVE, followed by: (AUTHOR of ANYTHING YOU CAN ACT, I CAN ACT LOUDER and ROAR: THE ACTOR’S GUIDE TO MASKING NITWITS).
Chris knew he shouldn’t have let Robert collect the scripts. He’d known, and he’d let him do it anyhow, and now here he was. The price of laziness, as his mother would say.
“Speaking,” Robert says gruffly, with the sort of bombasticism that indicates a grandiose pose and unnecessary gesticulation. “To whom do I owe the interruption? I’m very busy, you know-“
“Robert,” Chris says, slightly louder and perhaps a little hysterical. “What is this?”
“What is what.”
“What is this?” He demands, his voice fraying. The corner of the casting list just caught his eye, and the role of Macavadolf is glaring up at him like the very ink itself disdains the reader.
“Is this some kind of guessing game? What is what? It’s a weak director that prevaricates, Chris,” Robert barrels on, taking advantage of his speechlessness. “Unless you mean what is this, as in, what is our relationship. In which case, allow me to fetch the notebook I have for this very-“
“Catsaret, Robert,” Chris manages at last. The words taste bad coming up. “That’s what this is. Catsaret. What were you thinking?”
A long, suspicious pause. “Hm? What? Oh, that’ll be Annie’s script, of course. I think you’ll find my contribution is-“
“This is two pages of bad cat jokes in Annie’s handwriting, and-“ he squints, “fifty typewritten pages of- of-“
He can’t remember the last time he was genuinely lost for words - alright, he can (the production of A Mid-Autumnal Afternoon’s Extended Ponder when the four main cast all forgot which role they were playing, Trevor inexplicably in the middle, while Chris as Berberon was trapped by his cloak hovering above the stage), but he doesn’t want to.
“The plot summary’s on the inside cover.” Robert tells him helpfully.
“Of ‘a daring and dazzling tale of anthropomorphic cat-lounge singers rescuing Old Hysteronomy from Cat-Hitler just in time for Christmas. Featuring the ensemble song ‘Mein Hair.’’”
God. Seeing it all written out like that, Chris only feels more insane. Surely this isn’t the best his actors can do. No one could consider this the best of anything.
“It’s rather good, isn’t it?” Robert says into the silence, with a distinct air of smugness before he seems to catch himself. “Ah, that is to say. Annie came up with the- the bare bones as it were, but I was the one to truly whip it into perfection. A tasty meringue of-“
“Robert, are you out of your mind?”
It comes out flat and breathless.
There’s an indignant noise on the other end of the line.
“You-“ Chris pauses, staring down at the words 'Mein Hair’ again in disbelief. “You- we needed a script to right our course with the audience, and you decided to take one of the most famously controversial musicals of all time and add Nazis? You thought Nazis would improve Cats?”
“You’re being very rude!” Robert booms. “Ahem. I mean, to Annie. To Annie, and to my light, yet, I think you’ll find, significant editing contribution-“
“Robert, we are not putting on a play in which cabaret singers in cat ears sing ‘Tomeowrrow Belongs To Jellicle Cats.’ For one thing,” he breathes in sharply, “It is a blatant and shameful copyright violation. For another-“
“Oh, pshaw!”
“For another!” Chris emphasises, “That- the original song is a terrifying representation of how nationalism, using the facade of tradition, turns a crowd into a hostile force. I am not singing a version where the Jellicle cats are the fascists, have you completely lost your senses?”
There’s a long, sullen pause.
“Lack of scope,” Robert says finally. “That’s your problem as a director, Chris. Lack of scope, and lack of imagination. You just can’t conceive of a novel new approach to antiquated traditions past-“
“Because I don’t want to combine a terrifying story of complacency in the face of bigotry with the musical where they all pretend to be cats and say nonsense words?” Chris sputters. This is the end of enough, really. As though he doesn’t get enough abusive emails from playgoers, critics, and the occasional BBC staff member, as it is.
“German, nonsense words… you’d be surprised how easy they are to mix,” Robert tells him airily - Chris knows, he just knows by the way his voice lilts, that he’s doing one of those patronising gestures again. “Anyway-“
“Absolutely not, Robert. I’m putting my foot down,” Chris cuts in firmly. Communication and understanding is one thing, but he’s not going to be pushover enough to put on a musical about Cat Hitler. No more plays going wrong, is the goal, and Catsaret is wrong even just in written form. To its core, it exudes wrongness. “On no account will we be staging this.”
Robert makes an unpleasant scoffing noise. “Oh! Oh! I see how it is! Bribing your way back to the top with sweet promises as thin and insubstantial as a pixie’s kisses, just to let down the artist! You’re a politician, Chris, that’s what you are.”
“How can a pixie’s kisses be thin, exactly?” He asks, more weary than angry for one resigned moment.
“You tell me! One second, the pixie is frolicking about telling you about listening to actors, and the next, he’s impugning your- Annie’s- creative vision from his comfy leather chair of lies!”
“Oh, for god’s sake, Robert,” Chris snaps, exasperated beyond belief. “First of all, you can stop pretending Annie wrote this, I don’t think you even gave her a part.”
“All actors in not-named roles are part of the miscellaneous cat audience of perverts and licentiates.” Robert mutters.
“Describe to me one time Annie has ever used the word licentiate.”
“…I think she was very inspired. Struck by genius, if I’m being honest.”
Unbelievable.
“Secondly,” Chris says, before he ends up on another ridiculous tangent, “You cannot have really thought we’d consider this.”
“Whyever not?” Robert roars, his mouth apparently close enough to his phone’s receiver that the audio is muffled. “Fear, Chris? Fear and cowardice?”
“Rumplejerry and MUNGOAUSTRIA, Robert,” Chris bellows back.
“No, it works, you see, because a slang term for German soldiers was Jerry-“
He’s not going to address that. He cannot begin to address that, and he won’t try. Instead, Chris starts flicking through the assembled pages on his desk for something that’ll make Robert see reason.
“I mean, look at the casting, Robert!” He pauses. Squints. Holds the page up to his face, shuts his eyes, opens them again. “Look at the… the casting. Robert?”
“Oh, what now?” Robert grouses.
“You- have you proofread this?”
“Honestly, Chris. Your obsession with grammar is the reason you can’t make a woman stay, I hope you know that.”
“Not- not grammar, and that’s completely-“ Chris closes his eyes again for a moment. “Robert. Not only have you cast yourself as the Rum Brad Tugshaw, Mac- oh, Christ, -Macavadolf Hitcavity, and old Hysteronomy - not a word, by the way-“
Robert clicks his tongue. “Here he goes. You remind me of Denise sometimes-“
“-which I am certain is logistically impossible, you appear to have cast me as, well,” Chris massages his nose bridge and prays for patience. “Sallystofees the Bowling Cat, a striking lady-magician and sultry cabaret singer who shares a passionate unresolved history with Macavadolf Hitlfur.”
“Yes?” Robert asks, rather more belligerently than Chris would consider fair in this situation. “And?”
“Why?” He expels the word in one great breath, boggling and headachey and still with god-knows-how-much of this conversation ahead of him. “Why, exactly, would you cast me as a seductive lady-magician cat? That is clearly a Sandra role.”
“Narrow-minded, Chris,” Robert informs him, in tones of great sanctimony. “I pity you and your fragile masculinity.”
“Leaving aside that it’s a lead role, and you usually try to cast me in anything but those, why on earth would I be playing a- a seductive female cat when we have female actors who already struggle for parts?”
“Sandra’s going to be the railway one, with the lusty sailors,” Robert says incomprehensibly. “She needs to expand her range. You need to expand your range. You’re getting stagnant, Chris. You can’t always be the thin and unpleasant friend, you know, you’ve mastered that.”
“Thank… you?” Chris thinks that might’ve been the closest thing to a compliment Robert’s ever attempted.
“Greasy love rival? Effortless. Obnoxious bureaucratic stick-in-the-mud? You do it every day. Repressed anal-retentive headcase? Even now. It’s time to do something new before we all die of boredom.”
Given how successful their productions usually are, Chris highly suspects something else will beat boredom to it.
“If that’s the case,” he asks, hating himself for even trying to reason with the unreasonable, “Why aren’t you playing Sally?”
“Sallystofalees, Chris,” Robert reminds him. “Come on, switch on, man. I’m the only one with enough gravitas to portray a sex-symbol journalist cat and such. Annie said that. In those words.”
“You-“
“And besides, you already wear women’s jeans. The costume would be easier to adjust for you.”
“I do not wear- costume?” Chris is struck silent with dread. “Robert. Tell me you didn’t already purchase costumes.”
“No,” the lunatic says, after a significant pause. “Since you’ve so rudely and unjustifiably blocked my access to the Society’s funds, I haven’t yet made the purchases. But come on, man, I think we both know any Sallystofalees costume will be sold in size twink, not bear.”
“What?”
“What.”
Robert sounds so lucid, he ponders. How can one man sound so confident while saying such indefensible things? Is Robert a sociopath? Is that politically correct to think?
Chris shakes his head and resolutely puts the last few moments out of his mind. “I- nevermind. The answer is no, Robert. Never in a million years. And,” he lowers his voice automatically, “I do not wear women’s jeans! That was only the one time, and it’s because I was- there was a mixup, alright, it’s none of your business.”
“Yes, yes, you put on some bar-trollop’s skinny jeans and didn’t realise until you got to rehearsal. What a scandal,” Robert says, and Chris can hear him rolling his eyes. “Which proves my point, if anything. Did you notice? Did anyone else notice?”
“Yes! Eventua-“
“No,” Robert interrupts loudly. “All that happened was Sandra saying you had an ‘unexpectedly nice arse’ and then we all had to take that sodding online sexual harassment seminar. Thanks for that, by the way.”
Chris checks to see if anyone’s nearby, then gently bangs his head against the desk. He’d forgotten that little atrocity. The janitor had been there and must’ve tipped off the brass, because a BBC HR representative who’d previously only ever looked at him with mild horror and disbelief had insisted on sitting him down shortly afterwards and asking if he felt safe in the workplace. He’s reasonably certain she’s the only reason their funding hasn’t been cut yet, because she still sends him the occasional uncomfortable inquiry about his work environment, but at least that’s one good thing to come out of it.
“Oh, God,” Chris mumbles, into Robert’s continuing diatribe about freedom of sexuality and artistic integrity. “Definitely not. It’s a no, Robert. You won’t convince me.”
“…oh, fine,” Robert sighs, taking his loss in an uncharacteristically gracious manner. Instead of reassuring him, it strikes fear into Chris’s heart. Something bad is coming.
“Really?”
“Yes, well, perhaps it’s a tad forward-thinking for the BBC.” Robert sniffs, and Chris would be delighted to leave it there, but then he continues, “Anyway, there’s plenty of gold in all the scripts. Ahem. Or so I’m told.”
Chris looks down at his pile of unread paper, horror dawning upon him. “Robert.”
“Mm?”
“This better not be the state of any of the other scripts.”
“Well!” Robert shouts, straight into the receiver. “Good chat, Chris, but I’m seeing a tunnel ahead-“
He makes an atrocious attempt at phone static, and Chris bangs his head into the desk again, rueing the day they ever met.
“That’s not-“
“Yes it is!” Robert raises his voice.
“It is n-“
“Bwah! Bweh!” The man thunders over him. “Coriander! Thursday!”
“I hate it when you do-“
“Masking, Chris, and oh there’s the tunnel-“
Chris stands up without really meaning to, thudding his hand down on the desk in a manful display of emotion. His pencil sharpener falls off and bursts open on the carpet.
“Tell Annie I want to see her unedited script!” He shrieks.
Robert hangs up on him.
He puts his head in his hands.
Surely, Chris dares to think, Robert can’t have gotten to all the scripts. He’s already written fifty pages of horrifically anthropomorphic 1930s cat hijinks and reworded songs to fit the plot (if one can even call it that). There’s simply no way he can have put this much effort and dedication into every other script as well.
Well. You can say many things about Robert Grove - really, many things, Chris has a list somewhere - but you can’t say he’s not dedicated. Dedicated to being a deranged attention-hog, but dedicated nonetheless.
Miserableness of the Opera, reads Jonathan’s script. Chris opens it. Half of the pages are word-for-word from The Phantom of the Opera with French nobility names inserted in through search-and-replace. Half of the pages are in Robert’s slapdash, grandiloquent hand.
Scene 4 (just cut out the bit about Madame Giry, no one remembers her): Marie Antoniette enters, dressed as a humble opera singer.
No, Chris decides, that is quite enough of that.
Twelfth Fight, Robert has written, in his own script. Being a tale of swashbuckling and swooning! Espionage and eseduction!
It is over 100 pages long, intermittently typewritten, and appears to be the grotesque love-child of Twelfth Night and The Three Musketeers. It’s convoluted, incredibly overdramatic, and everyone dies or is thought to have died at least once.
It is, unfortunately, easily the best script of the bunch so far.
Chris wads it up, uncrinkles it, steels his resolve, and then wilts and puts it in his desk drawer. He can’t reward behaviour like this, he really can’t - and he’s certainly not playing Olivia, aka, the secret King of France, aka, the woman believed to be the spy, aka Dumas’s secret sister who occasionally breaks the fourth wall to provide meta analysis on the nature of love and deception - but Robert, flawed as he is, has always had something of a talent for writing.
Still, though. Chris can’t pick him. He can’t let Robert win, he’ll be insufferable. He’ll write Catsaret part two and set it in the French Revolution. The wrong French Revolution, by the way, Les Misérables is set in the second one - and there is no right French Revolution for Catsaret anyway, because it takes place in the 1930s, and because it’s not an actual play in the first place-
There has to be a script Robert didn’t get to.
Vanessa’s script reads Lady Devonshire’s Diary. It’s a serviceable, if unimaginative, period piece with a somewhat gossipy tone and an oddly Victorian moral. It has also all been crossed out in favour of 'My Fair Frannie', a play about a snooty rich man who adopts an orphan in the hopes of charming a woman, and has to make her presentable to society before Christmas. The only words Robert left uncrossed are ‘Lady Devonshire’ - apparently the child-loving dream woman of Duke Professor Warbucks owns part of the countryside now - and the sentence ‘Delilah reels from a hard knock to the head,’ which he has replaced with ‘they perform the Hard Knock Gavotte.’
Chris kicks his pencil sharpener across the room.
Sandra’s submission is called Tortured Liaisons of the Night, and is so explicitly inappropriate that Chris doesn’t feel the need to finish it. Robert has crossed exactly nothing out, and in many cases has endeavoured to add more detail and blocking to the intimate scenes to 'make sure the audience doesn’t smell inauthenticity.’ Altogether, it’s unsalvageable.
The main character’s name is Felicity. In casting, there is a list to the end of the page of crossed-out names, alternating between Sandra and himself in different handwriting. He can feel a tension headache coming on.
“Anything good?” Trevor asks, wandering into his office without knocking, as is his (regrettable) wont.
(Once, he walked in on Chris’s birthday call with his mother. It still makes him itchy to think about the look on Trevor’s face - you’d think that sort of experience would teach a man caution, but no. All it gave Trevor was the inexplicable urge to hide Chris’s phone on his birthday).
Then he looks at Chris and winces.
“I think Robert is sick,” Chris says miserably, surrounded by loose pencil shavings and fisting at his hair. “Or planning something.”
Trevor lets out a low not-my-circus whistle and walks right back out again.
Jonathan’s script is titled ‘Jonathan’s script.’ That is all.
At the bottom of the page, Robert has scrawled in a slant, ‘West Side Gory? About Dracula versus Jonathan Harker’s vampire-hunting dance squad of Latino youths. Milk. Baguette (NOT wholemeal). Hobnobs. Convince Chris to remove stick from-‘
This one, Chris does ball up and hurl across the room. It catches Trevor, who is passing at exactly the wrong moment, straight in the eye - which frankly Chris feels very little guilt for, until Trevor uncrumples the paper, reads the front side, raises a brow, flips it over, reads the back side, and raises his other brow to meet its brother at an alarmingly high altitude.
“Is this Robert?” He asks, in a slightly choked voice.
“…yes?”
Trevor looks at him for a moment, then shakes his head and crams the paper in his pocket. “I don’t… I don’t think he meant to give that to you.”
A switch flips in Chris’s head, and he’s standing. “Why not?” He asks sharply. “What does it say?”
“Nothing,” Trevor mumbles, and takes a step back. “It’s a shopping list, he probably… needs it? I’ll just, go-“
“Trevor.”
“Uh huh?” he says, still slowly backing away.
Chris takes a breath in. “As directeur of the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society, I demand that you-“
Trevor wheels backwards with increasing speed, suspiciously pink-eared. Chris, before he even knows what he’s doing, powers forward determinedly.
“I, uh, left my car idling-“
“-stop running-“
“Is that the cops? I think I hear the cops-“
“And-“
“Great chat, mate, as e-“
“-give me that piece of paper!” Chris shrieks, perhaps not as commandingly as he’d have liked. In his defence, it’s been a long day. A long year. A long commitment to a society of imbeciles. Trevor evades him, dodging and hopping and banging his shin on the doorframe and cursing up a blue streak all the while.
“Chris, leave it-“
“Trevor!” Chris barks shrilly. “If Robert is planning another coup, I deserve to know-“
“Oh, sod off, you know he’s not-“
“Well, if he’s not, then just show me the damn thing!”
He corners Trevor against the wall. Trevor, breathing fast, tries to duck under his arm and accidentally elbows him instead; groaning, Chris falls forward and knocks Trevor square in the nose with his head.
“Son of a-“
He takes advantage of Trevor’s temporary distraction to shove a hand in his pocket, dodging flailing arms as he pulls out a receipt, a roll of tape, bandaids, eyeliner, a condom, and what looks like an extremely old picture of Liam Gallagher-
“Would you stop that!”
And then, finally, he gets it - other hand, other pocket, while Trevor’s distracted clutching his nose and batting him away - but then Trevor catches on and intercepts him, and they’re holding hands as they do an awkward, heated tug-of-war for the paper, and-
Rip.
Chris, who was clearly born under a bad star, is left with the only plain corner of the page. Trevor gets the inky part, stares at it for a split-second, and then without further hesitation crams it in his mouth.
“Good lord,” Chris says faintly. Trevor begins, determinedly, to chew. Neither of them blink.
He’s weighing how risky it would be to stick his fingers in Trevor’s mouth to retrieve the paper versus how likely Robert’s chances of successfully supplanting him a second time are, when two things happen.
One, Trevor, still not breaking eye contact, actually swallows.
And two, Robert comes striding in.
“Chris? Chris, I’ll have you know the door’s unlocked, just about anyone could wander in off the street and sabotage us, this is not befitting of a director-“
He stops in the doorway and looks at them.
Chris, acutely aware that he is essentially vertically planking over Trevor’s body with a hand fist-deep in one of his pockets, stares back.
Trevor swallows again, convulsively, and lets out a thick noise.
“You- augh, that blew- you owe me, mate,” he says to Robert, when he just keeps staring. “Trust me.”
“What in God’s name.” Robert starts, and then, unprecedentedly, doesn’t continue.
“Trevor, we will be having words about this later,” Chris hisses, in an attempt to restore order. Abruptly aware that he is essentially speaking directly into Trevor’s jaw, which is highly inappropriate considering his position of power in the society, he then lurches back.
And then- well. Then he trips on the pencil sharpener.
He feels it crunch under his foot, the tell-tale slide into disaster he’s become intimately familiar with, the way a yip starts building in his throat-
“Oh shite-“ Trevor, who is apparently indiscriminately noble today, lurches forward to stop him falling and gets a knee straight to the gut. “Oof!”
Catastrophe occurs.
Seconds later, Chris is on the floor in a groaning, shuffling pile of limbs, and Robert is staring down at him from above.
“Really not your best work, Chris,” he says darkly, and steps on Trevor’s hand on the way out.
Dennis’s play - if it matters, which of course it doesn’t - describes itself as a ‘combination of those posters on the tube.’ It’s unpromisingly called ‘Rent Boys.’
Underneath the synopsis, Robert has written (I don’t even want to be associated with this shite. - Anonymous)
Then, in a different pen colour, he’s added. (- Anonymous ESTEEMED EDITOR).