• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Out of chaos, comedy

September 15, 2017 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report on a New Jersey revival of What the Butler Saw and the last of five productions at Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre, A Flea in Her Ear. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Farce is the most paradoxical of all genres of comedy. It requires high discipline on the part of the director, the actors and their offstage collaborators to set in motion the whirligig of seeming onstage chaos that is farce at its best. Without split-second control, everything falls apart—and not in a good way, either. Joe Orton’s “What the Butler Saw,” a four-door farce of transcendent indelicacy, is as funny a play as has ever been written, but it won’t play itself: It must be staged to the hilt, unobtrusively but decisively and in precise accordance with Orton’s explicit requirement that the actors behave as though they have no idea that their plight is preposterous. “Unless it’s real,” he wrote, “it won’t be funny.” Paul Mullins’ unusually well-cast Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey production obeys that commandment, as well as all of Orton’s stage directions, with madly funny consequences….

In addition to sticking to the letter of the script, Mr. Mullins has encouraged the cast to develop primary-color characterizations that are clear but never exaggerated. Everyone obliges with the utmost effectiveness…

In a small house like the 308-seat F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre, farces can be produced with an up-close economy of dramatic gesture that suits Orton’s work quite well. In a large outdoor amphitheater like American Players Theatre’s 1,088-seat Up-the-Hill Theatre, where Georges Feydeau’s “A Flea in Her Ear” is currently being mounted, bigger and broader comic techniques are needed to engage the audience. David Frank’s APT revival of Feydeau’s 1907 masterpiece about hijinks at what Mr. Frank’s brand-new English-language adaptation dubs the Mount Venus Hotel (Feydeau called it the Hotel Coq d’Or) is nominally set in turn-of-the-century Paris. In practice, it feels more like a jumbo version of the kind of all-American sketch comedy in which Sid Caesar and Carol Burnett used to specialize—and I mean that as a compliment. The doors start slamming with abandon in the second act, and by play’s end you’ll be sore from rib-stretching laughter….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Eamonn Andrews interviews Joe Orton on The Eamonn Andrews Show. This episode was originally telecast on April 23, 1967, while Orton was at work on What the Butler Saw:

Filed Under: main

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

September 2017
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  
« Aug   Oct »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Snapshot: Rudyard Kipling speaks about writing and truth
  • Almanac: Rudyard Kipling on the prevalence of obsessions
  • Lookback: on being sworn in to the National Council on the Arts
  • Almanac: Flannery O’Connor on inhibited families
  • Just because: Flannery O’Connor appears in a 1932 newsreel

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in