French Farce and Commedia Dell’arte
Exploring the roots of DON’T DRESS FOR DINNER’s farcical hijinks in Italian comedy
Onstage at Lantern Theater Company May 24 to June 24, 2018, Don’t Dress for Dinner is a sterling example of the farce genre, characterized by physical humor and complicated situations for its actors to navigate. But the modern and urbane characters of the play have their roots in another form: commedia dell’arte.
Commedia dell’arte was an Italian form of comedy that was especially popular in the 16th to 18th centuries. It was an ensemble genre, and its troupes based their improvisations in stock characters and situations. The stories were often familiar ones, perhaps taken from classical sources, and the actors would improvise their dialogue around that framework, allowing them to tailor the performance to each particular audience. These performances were often in the open air, performed by traveling troupes.
The actors in these troupes each specialized in a particular character, which could be placed into any situation or plot. The young lovers, often the center of the conflict, were the innamorati. The clever servant — one of the zanni — brings about the play’s happy ending. Pantalone is a rich, retired womanizer; Il Dottore is a parody of the learned, pompous academic — and usually drunk. The stock plots these characters populated often involved adultery, marriage, and the success of the witty servant. The comic characters were all masked, leaving the innamorati as the only characters onstage with visible faces.
Outside of Italy, commedia found its next greatest success in France. French master playwright Molière worked with visiting Italian commedia troupes, and the French court sometimes hosted performances. Many of commedia’s tropes made their way into France’s comedy writing — especially farce.
The word “farce” comes from the French word for “stuffing” or “padding,” referencing its original place as a comic interlude within much more serious dramas. While it developed alongside commedia, farce truly came into its own in 18th century France, incorporating elements of the visiting Italians’ commedia.
Like commedia, farce depends on recognizable characters and broad situations. The simple characters of farce often have echoes of their masked commedia counterparts, and the plots generally hinge on similar topics: marriage, infidelity, and the success of the clever underling.
Both genres also rely on physical humor: fights, pratfalls, and other physical humor abound. Farces are famous for their highly choreographed door slamming and furniture tripping, and this has roots in commedia as well. Other than the basic plot elements, only one other element of commedia performances were scripted: the lazzi, which were carefully choreographed and rehearsed bits of stage business, fighting, or acrobats.
Where commedia was largely improvised, farce is notoriously tight. To achieve the rapid-fire humor and pace that farce demands, each beat is carefully plotted and rehearsed, eliminating commedia’s flexibility to adapt to various audiences. And though commedia’s lazzi were rehearsed like modern farce, they were often unconnected to the plot and presented as interludes, while the physical humor of farce is essential to the plot and the play’s construction.
French farce and Italian commedia both relied on romantic love, courtship, and convention in their plots, and in the 1920s this was taken several steps further with the introduction of the bedroom farce. This subgenre kept traditional farce’s physical comedy and broad characterizations, but increased the sexual innuendo and delicate situations. Don’t Dress for Dinner is born of these traditions: a saucy, witty, athletic comedy of manners and marriage — and featuring a clever servant who might just save the day.
Don’t Dress for Dinner is onstage at the Lantern May 24 through June 24, 2018. Visit our website for tickets and information.
