Farce in America
A look at French farce and its place in American theater, film, and television.
With our spring 2018 production of Don’t Dress for Dinner, the Lantern serves up a wickedly funny French farce for an American audience. From commedia dell’arte to French playwrights Georges Feydeau and Marc Camoletti, farce has been a constant on stages around the world and across the ages. While dominated by English and French writers on modern stages, farce has also transcended mediums and made its way into American art. American comedies on stage, on the big screen, and on television revel in farce’s particular brand of physical comedy and zany circumstances. Here are just a few examples of genres and performers who embrace farce here at home.
Silent Movies
By nature, silent movies depend on physicality and broad characterization to make up for the lack of sound and dialogue. As a result, many silent comedies have a distinctly farcical bent, mining humor from slapstick, deteriorating circumstances, and recognizable characters. Silent films’ most gifted American performers include Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton, whose silent movies often center on meticulous physical comedy and increasingly complicated circumstances. Often, whatever can go wrong will go wrong in a Keaton or Arbuckle gag, and much of the humor comes from watching them adapt to new and increasingly stressful situations.
Keaton in particular was an athletic comedian whose physical stunts and split-second reversals are elemental to farce. Here are some of his best stunts and gags:
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a brand of touring variety entertainment that was especially popular in the U.S. and Canada from the 1880s to the 1930s. The acts on any given vaudeville bill might include musicians, dancers, animals, musicians, strongmen — and comedians. Those comedy acts might be traditional joke tellers, or they might be slapstick comedians with farcical DNA, using their short time onstage to delight audiences with physical comedy and easily identifiable characters.
Silent film stars often came from vaudeville — in fact, Buster Keaton developed his brand of comedy while on the road in a vaudeville family.
Rumors
While most of our famous onstage farces come from overseas, Neil Simon’s Rumors is homegrown here in the United States. A dinner party goes spectacularly wrong, shots ring out, police are called, and identities are swapped as the guests attempt to adapt and succeed in the rapidly deteriorating situation. Innuendo is dropped, doors are slammed, and the pace accelerates. Actress Christine Baranski won a Tony Award for the original 1988 Broadway production, and a 2013 reading featured comedy legends Martin Short and Andrea Martin. As of this writing, there are more than 20 productions happening across North America.
According to The New York Times, Rumors “has nothing on its mind except making the audience laugh.” That could be a motto for farce of all kinds.
Sitcoms
Farcical elements are all over American sitcoms, thanks in part to their 22-minute running time. Farce — and sitcoms — demand speed. As the situation deteriorates, the participants must quickly adjust and act, usually making the situation more dire. With its three-act structure and short length, the sitcom too needs speed, quick action, and the kind of easily recognizable situations and characters that an audience can latch on to without wasting time on lengthy exposition.
Like many farces, including Don’t Dress for Dinner, deception is often key to sitcom plots; who knows what, when, and how much is common fodder for these shows. I Love Lucy often centered on situations rapidly getting worse while the heroine attempted to hide the chaos, like the famous conveyor belt bit or Lucy’s drunken Vitameatavegamin commercial. Three’s Company was based on a central deception about the characters’ relationships, and the comedy often spun out of keeping up those appearances. And any number of modern sitcoms — Friends, Arrested Development, New Girl, and many others — hinge on (failed) secret keeping or mistaken identity.
Physical comedy, breakneck speed, deteriorating situations, and barely controlled deception are all hallmarks of farce, and American pop culture makes delirious use of them. So too does Don’t Dress for Dinner — a farcical confection that puts laughs on the menu.
Don’t Dress for Dinner is onstage at the Lantern May 24 through June 24, 2018. Visit our website for tickets and information.
