"Don't worry," Trevor is telling Chris nearby. "I know you weren't dressed as a bird in that shot. It's fine. I've edited Vanessa in instead. No one's gonna notice."
I was asked for my thoughts on how willing the men of the Cornley Drama Society would be to play female roles, so here you go!
Max: happy to crossdress, thinks it’s funny. Twirls his skirts and has fun strutting around the stage.
Robert: absolutely happy to crossdress if the role is sufficiently major. Will complain that it’s degrading if he’s crossdressing for a minor role, but he doesn’t have any real objection to dressing up; he’s just using whatever excuse he can find to get a better part. Plays his female role with confidence and commitment, but he has some weird ideas about what constitutes believably female body language, and he refuses to shave his beard.
Jonathan: a little nervous, but willing to give it a try. Of course, in the end, he’s unable to get onto the stage. He sighs deeply. Why was he even worried? He should have known that nobody would actually see him dressed like this.
Dennis: confused and alarmed, assumes he’s made a mistake and picked up the wrong costume somehow. He’ll put on the costume if you manage to convince him it’s the correct one, but he’ll be on edge at all times, expecting Chris to scold him for being in the wrong outfit.
Chris: feels extremely uncomfortable when dressing as a woman, but he’ll do his best to push through it and put on a sincere performance. The look suits him, but his discomfort leads him to move and deliver lines a little awkwardly.
We get a slightly more concrete idea of how the women in the society play male roles, because that's something we actually see in the Goes Wrong plays, but here are some thoughts about their attitudes anyway:
Annie throws herself with enthusiasm into male roles and has a great time. Even in the Cornley Drama Festival, when she had control over the staging and casting, she actively chose to play a man in her farce; it's definitely something she's happy to do!
Vanessa is more or less neutral on playing male roles; a role is a role like any other. However, male roles do add an extra source of stress; she worries about whether she's believably depicting a man, and she'll panic if she messes up in some way, e.g. if her voice slips.
Sandra dislikes playing male roles. She's here to be a sexy lady, and she feels that being cross-cast gets in the way of that. Which is a shame, because she looked great as a boy in 'The Most Lamentable...'!
Lucy is stressed out in any role, but she slightly prefers playing boys because it means she doesn't have to hear Robert's bizarre ideas about How to Be Feminine.