Another character is a Shakespeare-quoting chef who’s in love with a waitress. “Hugh Burlap is an ad-break character,” explains Innes. “He’s a chef who doesn’t really want to be one. He dreams of treading the boards. Then he meets a waitress and does soliloquys. It’s a lovely story. He’s the ad-break character who we hear from before we go back to the dramas of the other two characters; theirs are the more serious stories.”
Innes said he wanted to create a kick-arse female character so he created Roslind Greenhall, a chemistry professor and mother who also happens to be a WWII war hero. “I wanted to rewrite history – a war hero who’s a mother and also chemistry professor at Cambridge University. She’s combatant. She’ll cut people down in the lecture theatre if they heckle her. Rosalind is the kind of character I wish I was. Strong and confident. Even when shit happens.”
Did Innes need to do much research to create his characters and their stories? “I did a bit of research about Bletchley Park,” he answers. (Bletchley Park was the UK government’s centre for code and cypher activities in WWII). “I made Roslind Greenhall a contemporary of Alan Turing.” (Turing was the brilliant British mathematician and code breaker who was convicted of homosexuality and chemically castrated in 1952 by the State, events which led to his suicide two years later).
Basically, This Can’t End Well deals with issues Innes wants to talk about himself, using social commentary and parody. “There are so many secrets,” continues Innes. “The thing with LGBT coming out dramas is that they’re so sad. I wanted to write positive, hopeful stories about coming out. Even though there’s a story about depression, the show is still hopeful. Jonathon is the easiest character – the main exploration of the show is his story. He has mental health issues; essentially Jonathan is created in my own image. His story is a parody of the coming out story. He makes this change in his life and it becomes a humorous change, a monumentally huge and ridiculous change.”
Innes is a maths/chemistry teacher at a high school in the ‘far-eastern suburbs’. “I’m known as that funny shouty teacher; I’m always ranting to my year 11’s.” He’s well-used to the performing life, having been Artistic Director of the successful genre-based impro theatre troupe The Impro Box. As well as teaching full-time Innes hosts a podcast panel game show on the first Saturday of every month at Northcote’s Wesley Anne. The main challenge with This Can’t End Well, he says, is the logistics of putting the entire show together himself. “I’ve got a director – Rob Lloyd – so I’m a bit happier now.”
By Liza Dezfouli
