Comedy and Commedia: How Commedia Dell’arte Influences THE HEIR APPARENT
David Ives’ modern update of Jean-François Regnard’s 18th century French comedy has its roots in an even older Italian form.
Onstage November 8 through December 16, 2018, at Lantern Theater Company, The Heir Apparent is a thoroughly modern take on a classic genre. As a “transladaptation” — as playwright David Ives calls it — The Heir Apparent uses today’s vernacular and sensibilities to present a play written and set in 1708: Le Légataire universel, by Jean-François Regnard. But despite the play’s current-day quips and updated morals, both Ives and Regnard owe their plays to an older form: commedia dell’arte.
Commedia dell’arte — or “comedy of the profession” — was an Italian form of comedy that was especially popular in the 16th to 18th centuries. Commedia troupes would travel from town to town (and eventually country to country), performing in the open air. It was an ensemble genre, and built its comedy around physical humor and the improvisational skills of its actors.
These improvisations were hung on a situational framework, and its plots were generally familiar stories from classical traditions or the commedia erudita, or “literary drama.” The actors would improvise their dialogue around these plots, allowing them to tailor the performance to each particular audience. Only one element of commedia dell’arte was tightly scripted: the lazzi, which were carefully choreographed and rehearsed bits of stage business, fighting, or acrobats.
Like the plots, the characters were also familiar types. Actors in these troupes each mastered a particular stock character, honoring its core elements while adding their own twist to bring them to familiar yet unpredictable life. These characters could then be inserted into any commedia plot, and the most popular of them appeared again and again.
The zanni were the servants whose wily actions help clean up the messes of their masters. Within the servant class, Harlequin and Columbina are a valet and a maid, respectively, and often in love with one another. Their counterparts on the opposite end of the social spectrum are the innamorati, or the young lovers of the upper class whose marriage plot is usually central to the play. Pantalone is a rich, retired womanizer, comically old and miserly. Il Dottore is a parody of the learned, pompous academic. Other than the fresh faced innamorati, all comic characters in commedia were masked.
Commedia dell’arte dates to at least 1545. Competing troupes traversed Italy, delighting audiences with their particular mixes of familiarity, surprise, and physical humor. Though the form developed in Italy, it spread throughout continental Europe and found particular success in France. By 1653, France has its resident troupes of so-called Comédie-Italienne performers. Molière, the giant of French comedy, worked with visiting Italian commedia troupes to learn the tricks of their trade, and the French court sometimes hosted troupes for royal performances.
The fervor for commedia wasn’t to last, though. In 1697, Louis XIV expelled the Italian troupes from France, officially because they were to perform a play that offended a noble woman. By this time, commedia had gone stale; the stock characters were no longer evolving, and the physical comedy had overtaken the witty improvisations. Troupes began disappearing. By the beginning of the 18th century, commedia as it once was could no longer be found.
However, its lasting effect on comedy — especially French comedy — was profound. Though Molière and his successors, including Regnard, eliminated the improvisation and wrote their own stories, the madcap energy and core of the stock characters remained. Servants trick masters, lovers are kept apart by overbearing parents, and physical comedy abounds in French comedy throughout the centuries since commedia’s disappearance.
Columbina, Harelquin, Pantalone, and Il Dottore can all be found orbiting the innamorati in Regnard’s 1708 play — and in Ives’ 2011 reworking. The masks are gone, but the over-the-top comedy and exaggerated personalities remain. And though the characters and situations may seem familiar, how they unwind is full of delirious surprise. That was the magic of commedia, and of the plays indebted to it: recognizable characters and stories, taken to uproarious heights.
The Heir Apparent is onstage at the Lantern November 8 through December 16, 2018. Visit our website for tickets and information.
