The premise is simple. We’re there to watch a drawing room mystery and every conceivable thing that could go wrong does. Missed cues, scenery falling, effects going off at the wrong time, wardrobe malfunctions, etc. The cast was wonderful and the play was a masterclass in comic timing.
But there was something else that made the play work, something under the surface. But it was key, and without it the entire show would fail. What was it? Simply this:
The characters did not know they were in a comedy.
In other words, the actors played it straight. There was no winking at the audience. There was no acknowledgement that they were acting extraordinarily silly. To the characters, these events were real. And they were catastrophic – to THEM. To us, the audience, they were uproarious.
For my money, you get stronger heightened comedy when the characters don’t ham it up. You can put them in absurd very broad situations, but if they take it seriously then their reactions to the absurdity make sense.
The fact that the drawing room play failed was so funny was because the characters so wanted it to succeed. As the world was collapsing all around them they struggled to persevere, maintain their dignity, and control the damage. Instead of taking the stance of “Did you all see that?” they chose instead “I hope you didn’t see that.” And that one attitude made all the difference in the world.
If you’re writing a comedy, or directing a comedy, keep that principle in mind. It requires the actors to trust the material. If they don’t they sometimes get too big or try to save the day by milking laughs or breaking character. That’s the fastest way for a show to go into the tank.
Keep it real.
UPDATE: I will have limited access to the internet over the next couple of weeks so comments may not appear in as timely a manner. I will get to them but maybe as long as a day later. Feel free to curtail use of comments during that period. Things will be back to normal soon. Thanks.
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ReplyDeleteAbsolutely correct!
ReplyDelete50 years ago, we saw a perfect performance of the farce “ A Flea in her Ear” performed by the British National Theatre Company, on their tour to Toronto.
Olivier, Edward Hardwick, Geraldine McEwan were in the cast! People were actually “rolling in the aisles”. I couldn’t stay seated, I was so out of breath, gasping for air. Through it all, not one actor broke character or winked at the audience.
A few years later, the play was produced at the Shaw Festival, so we ran to see it, anticpating another night of hilarity in the theatre. Although many seemed to enjoy the show, we sat stone-faced and uncomprehending about how the humour had simply evaporated from the play.
It was, as you said, a production full of nudges and winks, hammy over-acting and clowning.
I believe some of the very best episodes of Frasier used the approach you describe and were, to my mind, up there with the very best farces ever produced.
This reminds me of the wonderful Frazier episode "Ham Radio" when they try to stage a vintage radio drama for the anniversary of their station but everything goes wrong. But they do try to make it work.
ReplyDeleteGreat point. I've seen the play twice, once with the original cast and once with the replacement cast, and loved it both times. Knowing what was coming didn't diminish my enjoyment when I went back because it was so well designed and executed.
ReplyDeleteI was crying the first time I saw Frasier's "Ham Radio", for the very reasons you list here.
ReplyDeleteSo, what is the name of the play?
ReplyDeleteBoth Laurel/Hardy and Buster Keaton were funny because they always tried to maintain their dignity in the face of absurdity (Chaplin not as much).
ReplyDeleteRalph Kramden as well.
Ken, isn’t the play’s name “The Play That Goes Wrong? It sound fun and I hope to get to see it when it comes West.
ReplyDeleteHow did your Cafe Play go?
... unless you were being Meta by intentionally messing up the name. “The Blog That Goes Wrong”... ( and it is coming to LA next year!)
ReplyDelete* PLAY THAT GOES WRONG, I presume.
ReplyDeleteThere's also a "sequel", THE COMEDY ABOUT A BANK ROBBERY, now playing in London. I hear it's also great.
ReplyDeleteZAZ gave the cast of AIRPLANE the same advice and I guess the results speak for themselves. I always say it's the writer's job to be funny and the actors job to be real and when I perform comedy I know the more real I am in the situation the more the laughter from the audience will stem from the relief that it's not THEM up their experiencing the situation they're laughing at.
ReplyDeleteVincentS, you beat me to it. However, I'd like to ad that dry, British comedies/actors, Noel Coward for example also use understatement to maximum effect. When all he'll is breaking loose and the reaction is "what a pitty." that can get big laughs, too.
DeleteM.B.
P.S. What's up Ken? Going to do some missionary work in a third-world country?
When Laura and I were in New York last summer for her show at the Metropolitan Room, we caught two Broadway shows. She wanted to see the musical "War Paint" with Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole. And since we had one extra day, I got tickets to a show I knew nothing about but that we could get into cheap at the last minute. That was "The Play That Goes Wrong," and it turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. I've seen it compared unfavorably to "Noises Off," but I've seen a couple of productions of that and never really got into that much. I thought TPTGW was much funnier.
ReplyDeleteYour comment on playing comedy straight also applies to one of my favorite movies that, coincidentally, we just watched on the TCM app over the weekend: "Lover Come Back" with Rock Hudson and Doris Day. It was the even better sequel to their first pairing, "Pillow Talk." Rock resisted making "Pillow Talk" because he was terrified of doing comedy until the director told him that it wouldn't be funny if he "tried" to be funny. He just had to trust the material and play it straight. Rock also said he followed Doris' lead and did everything the way she did because she had perfect comic timing.
BTW, "Ham Radio" is my favorite episode of "Frasier" ever, for obvious reasons (I'm a radio guy by profession and an old radio nut by inclination.)
Curious: Do the SAME things go wrong in "The Play That Goes Wrong" or do different things happen, depending on the whims of the stage crew? Just wondering if the cast knows what's coming, or if they have to adapt to the unexpected.
ReplyDeleteI wonder at the exceptions in shows such as The Carol Burnett Show. The cast were brilliant comedians, and the sketches were extremely funny and clever in their own right, of course. But on those (not so) rare occasions when Tim Conway would improvise and begin to break Carol or Harvey Korman up, their struggles to play it straight and keep in character amped the comedy up to a new level. And if that weren’t enough, when they finally broke up (“Will somebody shut that a—hole up?”) and started laughing, the comedy amped up to another level. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a comedy team accomplish their goals in quite so many levels before or since...
ReplyDeleteI'm a huge fan of the Reduced Shakespeare Company and, obviously, they're most popular show: The Complete Works of Wm. Shkspre Abgd. If you read the script (hi, theater nerd) the notes start with a caution that the play needs to be played straight. That these three players genuinely, sincerely want to introduce Shakespeare to the audience and, by God, they will!
ReplyDelete@Barry: I think part of the joy of watching performers corpse is when the role is diametrically opposed to mirth and being taken at least mostly seriously. Watching, say, Jimmy Fallon guffaw his way through a script is tedious. But watching John Cleese, playing some strict authoritarian figure in a Monty Python sketch, struggling to keep a straight face as he argues passionately that the parrot is dead and what's the shopkeeper going to do about it?!
Barry: They always played their characters and situations straight, though. I think the rule holds even in their case.
ReplyDeletewg
Jack Benny's radio show took the opposite tack. It began as a rather bland variety program, but suddenly broke the fourth wall when an episode began with Jack missing from the stage, the action abruptly cutting to him getting his hair cut in the lobby of the building. While a lot of these digressions were fully scripted, Benny embraced the idea of shattering the illusion of a given performance. He never seemed happier on air than when a member of the cast (usually the perpetually stage-frightened Mary) screwed up their lines in the middle of a sketch, knowing that he'd get a bigger laugh from the audience during the ensuing confusion than the bit would have received had it been done properly.
ReplyDeleteHad the good fortune to see "The Play that Goes Wrong" last month with my 12-year-old. She and I laughed so hard we were in pain by the end. A shame the show is coming to an end on Broadway. Absolutely breakneck-paced hilarity top to bottom. And most of the performers should have been earning stunt pay for the physical comedy. Glad to see you praise it here.
ReplyDeleteJust saw this in London earlier this month, and will be seeing it in Pittsburgh next month. Curious as to how it will translate in a theater that's about 6 times larger. Think the funniest in the "Goes Wrong" series is "Peter Pan Goes Wrong" - I don't think I've ever laughed so much in my life.
ReplyDeleteThe whole gimmick behind "Airplane!" was to take the old 1950s movie "Zero Hour" and redo it virtually point-for-point, only with comedy sight gags throw into the mix. Other then Stephen Stucker as Johnny (in the control tower) none of the rest of the cast knows they're playing in a comedy, and the Zucker brothers used the same gimmick for the pilot episode of "Police Squad!" which a point-for-point riff on an old 'M Squad' episode (a comparison of which has been posted on YouTube).
ReplyDeleteOn a less rigid format, Tony Randall was amazing in an episode of "The Odd Couple" trying to maintain his decorum as things go wrong around him, when Felix takes has daughter on a photo shoot at a house where the parents are little people (the payoff gag here probably would never get by network censors today, even though the whole point of the bit is Felix trying not to do the thing he ends up doing).
There are actually two direct sequels: "Peter Pan Goes Wrong" (which asks the question - what happens when you give these people a revolve and flying equipment - it was broadcast on the BBC a year or so ago as their Christmas show) and "The Nativity Goes Wrong" (which I haven't seen); "Comedy about a BAnk Robbery" is from the same team but is more of a straight caper movie on stage with a lot of physical stuff.
ReplyDeleteMATT was right....
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the Frasier episode, "Ham Radio," when the KACL cast did a catastrophic play on live radio, "Nightmare Inn."
It's still funny, especially when Niles asks the two sisters to stand next to each other to save on bullets.
Too bad nobody explained this to Leslie Neilsen, who played broader and broader starting with Naked Gun 3, to continually diminishing results. He killed the golden goose that shot him to the top.
ReplyDeleteI recall Sydney Pollack said something similar in his approach to "Tootsie." He had the characters play every situation straight and serious.
ReplyDeleteThis is a Friday question. Would you happen to know whose idea it was for Radar to have the Teddy Bear? It made the character much more childlike and likeable in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteMike Bloodworth.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with your point about British actors. They are trained to serve the writer first, then the character, then themselves as opposed to American actors - of which I am one - whose training is more ego-oriented.
I saw it on Broadway a few weeks ago and totally agree it was hilarious. Even their marketing goes wrong. A big billboard in Times Square proclaimed “LAST CHANCE! MUST CLOTHES AUG 26th!” (Good news, I just heard it’s been extended to the end of the year.)
ReplyDeleteThat's one of the reasons that DARK SHADOW remains so watchable so many years later.
ReplyDeletePart of it is because it's a soap opera, which is already dripping in dour gravitas. The actors were always playing every scene as if their situation were the most serious and important thing in the world (even though they sometimes struggled with laughter from the absurdity). No subsequent adaptation (except maybe the radio version) got it quite right, especially the recent movie, which often went for laughs.
To Greg Ehrbar:
ReplyDeleteI once tried watching the series of "Dark Shadows." I got about six months into it and finally gave up because it moved soooo sloooooooowly. Then I saw the movie version, "House of Dark Shadows." I noticed that it took the movie about 15 minutes to get to the point in the story where I stopped watching the TV series after six months. That became my standard formula for measuring time passing in soap operas: six soap opera months = 15 movie minutes.