And the Reviews are In!

One Man, Two Guvnors Takes New York by Storm

[post 265]

One aspect of the whole One Man, Two Guvnors phenomenon that several of us physical comedy mavens have commented on is that today's theatre-going audience, no matter how sophisticated, has seen little if any really well-done physical comedy, and certainly not the heavy dose they get served by this production. So far I've seen the show once on film (National Theatre Live series), once in previews here in New York, and then again on opening night. The response of the live audience was great, with both performances earning hearty, non-stop laughter and a standing ovation at the end.

It turns out the critics liked it just as much. There's this great web site, stagegrade.com, which reproduces all of the reviews to commercial productions here in New York and gives them an approximate grade. In other words, they read the review, estimate the critic's response as being, say, a B+, and then average all of these into a composite grade. As you can see above, One Man, Two Guvnors got an "A". No surprise there.

Click here for access to all of the reviews. A lot of them make interesting reading, as they try to grapple with a form they're less used to and have to figure out who to give the credit to!

One Play, Two Directors

An Interview with Cal McCrystal, Physical Comedy Director for One Man, Two Guvnors

[post 264]

Just two hours before yesterday's Broadway premiere of the London smash hit, One Man, Two Guvnors, Cal McCrystal sat down with Jim Moore (vaudevisuals.com) and myself for this interview about his work on the show. Significantly, Cal is listed not as an assistant or as a choreographer, but as its "Physical Comedy Director," his name immediately following that of overall director Nicholas Hytner in the program. Jim and I had already caught the show in previews and absolutely loved it, so when Hilary Chaplain offered to set up this interview, we jumped at the chance to talk shop.

First here's his short but impressive bio from the Playbill program:

Cal McCrystal is from Belfast. He trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and at École Philippe Gaulier. He is comedy director for the acclaimed clown routines in Cirque de Soleil’s Varekai and Zumanity. He has directed countless comedy shows  around the world, including the original Mighty Boosh shows, winning a Perrier Award. Cal has served as a physical comedy consultant to Sacha Baron Cohen on both Borat (presenting the MTV Awards) and the upcoming The Dictator. Cal is director for Giffords Circus and soon begins a new show at the Folies Bergère, Paris. His feature film, The Bubonic Plague, is in post-production.

And here's the interview, shot by Jim and also featured on this blog post on VaudeVisuals.com:




Click here for Cal's web site.

I'll have a lot more to say about the actual physical comedy in the show in a near-future post, but click here and here for my two previous posts about this production.

And some of this morning's reviews, hot off the press.
NY Times
NY Daily News
NY Post
Wall Street Journal

"One Man, Two Guvnors" Coming to Broadway

[post 245]

I wasn't in London at the right time to see the smash hit, One Man, Two Guvnors, but that didn't stop me from writing about it in this post, and I did subsequently catch a broadcast of it here in NYC as part of the National Theatre Live program. The title of that post was "Commedia Conquers London —  Is Broadway Next?" and the answer is yes! — it begins its Broadway run on April 6th. Finally I'll get to see it live on stage, and I'm hoping many of you will too. Highly recommended!!

You can read the whole NY Times article here.

Click here for a London Guardian article on the show's chances of becoming a Broadway hit.

Commedia Conquers London — Is Broadway Next?

[post 176]
Whether or not you've been following all my posts on commedia dell'arte and the various Carlos (Goldoni, Gozzi, Mazzone-Clementi), whether or not you think commedia is the holy grail of ultimate theatricality or merely a corny, hoary, outdated performance style, you will probably be surprised to learn that a modern adaptation of Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters is the hottest ticket in London.

What we're talking about is One Man, Two Guvnors, an adaptation of the Goldoni play by Carlo Bean — oops, I mean Richard Bean — currently in rep at the National Theatre but scheduled to open a commercial run in the West End's Adelphi Theatre on November 8th. According to Variety, producer Bob Boyett already has plans to bring it to Broadway.

Playwright Bean, who must be a spiritual brother to Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean, has moved the play's action to 1963 Brighton and our two masters/guvnors are now gangsters. The reviewers all say that the intricate plot is hard to describe but that it works magnificently well. The BBC critic, for example, called it ‘the single funniest production I've ever seen."

What excited me was the equally unanimous verdict that the production, directed by the always impressive Nicholas Hytner, is a masterpiece of physical comedy, with James Corden in the lead and Tom Edden as the waiter receiving particular praise. This rave from the reviewer for the Daily Telegraph is typical:

Corden, with a face like an enormous potato and a physical dexterity that is astonishing in one so corpulent, brings a winningly warm and harassed humanity to the role. He constantly button-holes the audience with asides and ad-libs, and turns the play’s great set piece in which he simultaneously serves dinner to his two masters into one of the most uproarious scenes of farcical comedy I have ever witnessed. He is brilliantly abetted by Tom Edden as a doddery ancient waiter who suffers no end of humiliation and keeps falling down the stairs. During this set-piece I found myself physically helpless with laughter.

[Full review here.]

This is the official National Theatre preview video:



The National Theatre web site features the following series of six behind-the-scenes "video diaries." Aimed at the general public, they're not as informative as you or I might like, but at only a minute or two each, they're worth a look-see; the intros to each video are from the NT web site

Video Diary #1 — Meet Daniel
Take a peek into rehearsal room one and meet Daniel Rigby, an actor in One Man, Two Guvnors. See him rehearsing, hot seating and improvising as well as meeting some other cast members.




Video Diary #2 — Stage Fighting
Jemima Rooper takes us for a sneaky peek into Daniel Rigby's fight rehearsal. Watch Combat Kate teach the cast how to stage fight. Meet more of the cast. WARNING: Do not try this at home!




Video Diary #3 — Singing and Dancing
Watch the cast singing and dancing their way through rehearsals. Meet more of the cast. See the girls strut their stuff, get a sneak listen to one of the tunes in the show and see the skiffle band in action.




Video Diary #4 — The Dinner Scene
The Dinner Scene is one of the highlights of the show One Man, Two Guvnors. It is beautifully choregraphed slapstick comedy requiring split-second timing and many many props.




Video Diary #5 — Tech Rehearsal
'Tech rehearsal' stands for 'technical rehearsal'. In a tech rehearsal all the technical elements of a show - lights, sound, set, props, costume - are put together on stage for the first time. Tech rehearsals take several days and can mean lots of sitting around for the actors. In this video diary we get a glimpse backstage at the One Man, Two Guvnors tech rehearsal.




Video Diary #6 — Press Night
Press night is the first formal night of the show's run after previews. All the theatre critics are invited to see the show and many of them will write reviews. Everyone gets excited and nervous before press night. Good reviews can mean a sell out show. See the cast of One Man, Two Guvnors getting ready for press night.





Here are a few excerpts from reviews, with links to the full articles:

Guardian
"But what makes the show a triumph is its combination of visual and verbal comedy. Bean and his director, Nicholas Hytner, have managed to make the dinner scene funnier than ever by adding a character: an octogenarian waiter, magnificently played by Tom Edden, whose hand alarmingly quivers as he serves a tureen of soup and who has an amazing capacity to fall backwards down stairs and return like a rubber ball."
Full review is here.

Variety
"Aided by physical theater expert and associate director Cal McCrystal, director Nicholas Hytner expertly harnesses that comedy energy to build a tight, towering succession of character shtick, sight gags, slapstick and chase sequences unseen since "Noises Off." All of which prepares everyone for the play's most famous scene. Desperate to keep his masters apart, Henshall is forced to serve dinner to them separately but simultaneously. But Bean and Hytner go one better, adding in a new-to-the-job, 87-year-old deaf waiter with the shakes, played by Tom Fedden as a magnificently doddering disaster-zone replete with jaw-dropping comedy pratfalls."
Full review is here.

Sketches on Theatre
"Hytner strikes the perfect balance between slick comedy and potential chaos and nails the infamous central banquet scene. Corden screeches across the stage, skidding on food and nearly sending the decrepit butler to his (late) grave. It's a bit like watching Faulty Towers on fast forward with the sound at full blast."
Full review is here.

New York Times
"If you’re allergic to British farce as practiced by the likes of Benny Hill and depicted in the “Carry On” movies, Two Guvnors may well have you sneezing convulsively. And yet I – who have always switched channels whenever anything remotely Benny Hill-ish crossed my television screen – found myself succumbing to the glazed rapture that spread throughout the audience on Friday night. That audience, by the way, included the actors Jonathan Pryce, Imelda Staunton and Patricia Hodge, and the Booker Prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson. Crude, rude and socially unattractive, One Man, Two Guvnors is, my dear, the chicest ticket in town."
Full review is here.

The Independent
"Driven by the dictates of his empty stomach and bewilderment over his duties, Corden displays great natural gifts for physical clowning – whether picking a fight with himself that is a mad paroxysm of auto-pugilism or, in a sequence that could be called a tour de farce, dishing lunch to his two masters in separate rooms of The Cricketers' Arms, a challenge not helped by a doddery, cadaverous, 87-year-old fellow-waiter with a pacemaker, balance problems and an ongoing relationship with the staircase that its roughly that of rubbish to chute. One Man, Two Guvnors, one massive hit."
Full review is here.

_________________________________

Seeing the Play in London:
The National Theatre run is sold out, but if you're there between now and September 19th, you can see the show for only £10, or £5 standing room. A limited number of day tickets (check schedule since it doesn't play every day) go on sale at 9:30 a.m. I've been doing this since 1970, when I got off the plane early in the morning, headed to the National, and nabbed a £10 ticket to see Laurence Olivier play Shylock in A Merchant of Venice. I'm still doing that four decades later! I usually get there 45–60 minutes early, but for a big hit like this, at least 90 minutes would be safer; bring a book! These cheap day tickets are only at the National Theatre and will not be available for the West End run.

Seeing the Play in a Movie Theatre Near You!?
On September 15th you can see a live telecast of this production in select movie theatres in cities acros the globe. Maybe there's a venue near you. The web site's a bit confusing, but apparently in NYC it will be screened on September 21 at Skirball NYU... but maybe elsewhere on the 15th?!? I know I'll be there, hopefully on the right night.

More Links:
• The National Theatre web page for this production
• You can download the script for Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters on this recent blog post and learn more about Giorgio Strehler's famous production here.
• You can buy the script for One Man, Two Guvnors here.

Complete Books: More Commedia (in italiano)

[post 174]

La commedia dell'arte è nata in Italia nel XVI secolo e rimasta popolare sino al XVIII secolo. Non si trattava di un genere di rappresentazione teatrale, bensì di una diversa modalità di produzione degli spettacoli. Le rappresentazioni non erano basate su testi scritti ma dei canovacci detti anche scenari, i primi tempi erano tenute all'aperto con una scenografia fatta di pochi oggetti. Le compagnie erano composte da dieci persone: otto uomini e due donne. All'estero era conosciuta come "Commedia italiana."

Pretty impressive, eh? Like I know me some Italian! Okay, so what if I just copied that from the commedia entry on the Italian Wikipedia to impress those folks who only read the first paragraph? You know, superficial people, not like you second-paragraph types. The truth is that one of the regrets of my life is never having found the time to learn Italian. Some of my blog readers, however, did find the time to learn Italian, especially the ones who grew up in Italy, and since commedia dell'arte also grew up in Italy, there are, not surprisingly, Italian commedia books that I figure are worth including here. Of course I haven't read them, so you couldn't prove it by me, but here are four that may be of interest; if not, remember they were free!


Carlo Gozzi e la Commedia Dell Arte by Ernesto Masi (1890)
You'll find more about Gozzi in my two previous posts. This one is all of 25 pages long, whereas the one that follows on Goldoni, apparently in the same series (see below), is 151 pages.

Carlo Gozzi e La Commedia Dell Arte



Il Goldoni e la Commedia dell'Arte by Alfonso Aloi (1883)
Il Goldoni e La Commedia Dell Arte



Le Maschere Italiane Nella Commedia dell'Arte e Nel Teatro di Goldoni by Elvira Ferretti (1904)
This appears to be more about the masked characters than about the actual physical masks.

Le Maschere Italiane Nella Commedia Dell



Scenari Inediti della Commedia Dell'Arte
As most of you know, commedia performers improvised around specific scenarios, and the most famous of these is the 1611 collection attributed to Flaminio Scala. The following work, which translates as Unpublished Scenarios of the Commedia Dell'Arte, is not contemporaneous, but rather from 1880, and was collected by one Adolfo Bartoli, who
I am assuming to be the very same scholar of Italian literature that you can read about here.

Scenari Inediti Della Commedia Dell Arte


You can purchase the English translation of the Flaminio Scala scenario collection here.

You can read some scenarios used by the modern-day commedia troupe, I Sebastiani, by clicking here.

Ciao!

Complete Books: More Commedia (in English)

[post 172]

We finally finish our saga of public domain books in English about the commedia dell'arte with these two offerings.

Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi
Count Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806) was, like Carlo Goldoni, a prominent eighteenth-century Venetian playwright who sought to improve upon what he saw as a declining commedia dell'arte through his own scripts. He was, however, a bitter rival of Goldoni, who he delighted in attacking in print. His most famous play, The Love of Three Oranges (1761), is a satirical fairy tale perhaps best known by way of Sergey Prokofiev's popular opera adaptation; likewise, Gozzi's Turandot became the basis for a Puccini opera of the same name. In the twentieth centrury, innovative Russian revolutionary director Vsevolod Meyerhold turned to commedia, and specifically to Gozzi, for inspiration, mounting a production of Love of Three Oranges and editing a provocative theatre journal that he named "The Love of Three Oranges." In 1996, Julie Taymor, of Lion King fame and Spiderman infamy, made a splash with her highly visual production of Gozzi's The Green Bird.

Although I have yet to find a public domain translation of Gozzi's plays into English, I do have his memoirs (1797) for you, which the Encyclopædia  Britannica describes as "vivid, if immodest."

The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi

_____________________________________

The History of the Harlequinade by Maurice Sand
Once upon a time, the early 1800s to be exact, there lived a prominent French novelist and celebrity by the name of George Sand, who had many scandalous affairs with both men and women, including Prosper Mérimée, Marie Dorval, Alfred de Musset and, most famously, Frédéric Chopin. The funny thing about George was that he was a she. No, not a transsexual or transvestite, just a dynamic woman and staunch feminist who used George Sand as a pen name, presumably so her works would be treated more seriously, just like that other George, the female author of Silas Marner, "George Eliot."

______________

"The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women." — George Sand

______________

All of which has nothing to do with commedia dell'arte, except that at the age of 20, long before her fame, George Sand married a baron and gave birth to Maurice Sand.  Sand mère soon ditched the boring baron and ran off, two kids in tow, to do her Lady Gaga thing. Sand fils grew up in a heady artistic milieu and not surprisingly became a successful novelist and illustrator in his own right, studying under the French romantic artist, Eugène Delacroix. And finally to our point: he also wrote and illustrated one of the earliest (1860) and most encyclopedic commedia histories, Masques et Bouffons.

I'll supply the original French text in a future post; meanwhile here's the 1915 English translation, published under the misleading title The History of the Harlequinade. Misleading because the harlequinade was actually a very specific segment in 19th-century English pantomime (read more here), whereas Sand's book traces the evolution of the commedia stock characters over the centuries and in different cultures, one chapter for each character.

First a few of the exquisite illustrations by Sand from the original French work; I'm not so sure the color plates in the English version are his. After that, the complete English translation in two volumes.

Pantalon

Le Docteur

Stenterello

Scapin

Volume 1:
historyofharlequ01



Volume Two:


historyofharlequ02

More "Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters"

[post 171]

As is often the case, since writing my post on Carlo Goldoni last week — read that post first! — I have stumbled upon a bunch of new stuff that I would have included had I been as wise and knowledgeable then as I am now. The new (to me) material is on Giorgio's Strehler's famous production of Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters. My first stumble was via an Adam Gertsacov post about Strehler on his clownlink.com blog, which led me along a virtual path to two NY Times articles and five more videos.

When this legendary production played Lincoln Center (NYC) in 2005 — I didn't see it because I was in Italy! — the Times first did this preview article about the acclaimed Arlecchino, Ferruccio Soleri, hailing him as "the last great Arlecchino."

Here's an excerpt:

The title character does not require intense interior exploration. "Arlecchino isn't Hamlet," Mr. Soleri said. "You can study his psychology in very little time; the rest is doing it well." Wearing a mask — a specially crafted leather visor that looks like a cross between a cat and a monkey — means that emotion must be expressed through voice and gestures. The role requires a great deal of physical exertion. So Mr. Soleri, who turns a trim 75 this year, warms up for an hour before each performance. "At my age you're in trouble if you don't do some stretching," he said. Arlecchino's physical antics are so rambunctious that the actor goes through three heavy felt patchwork costumes during each performance, one per act. "It's the sweat," he admitted, wringing out an invisible costume with his hands... The sense of madcap impulsiveness onstage is actually very much structured, though, and improvised moments are few.

You can read the whole preview article here.

Once the show opened, the Times posted its mostly favorable review.

Again, an excerpt:

The production's stature as an ambassador for Italian culture across the decades would seem to suggest that audiences are in for an evening of great cultural significance. Fat chance. Yes, theater historians can note the ways in which the production hews to tradition, including the use of masks for the comic male characters and the presence of an actual slapstick — two pieces of wood that are struck together for the sound or comic effect. It also uses a by-now familiar meta-theatrical frame: Ezio Frigerio's set, recreating the feel of an old village square, allows us to watch the actors chat and idle when they jump off the cramped wooden platform that supplies the playing space...

But anyone who has seen a Saturday morning television cartoon, an Abbott and Costello movie or a sex farce will recognize the comic techniques here. Commedia dell'arte simply mines humor from human folly by exaggerating behavior and manipulating language, and that recipe has never gone out of style...

As an actor, Mr. Soleri, now 75 — well past the age of advanced acrobatics, you would think — must be an inspiration to his colleagues. His nimble performance as a servant who sows confusion when he takes on two employers is a continual delight. A set piece in which the starved Arlecchino makes a meal of a fly raised peals of joyous disgust from the children in the audience. And the gymnastic scene in which Arlecchino sprints back and forth to serve his masters their dinners simultaneously is a marvel of cleanly choreographed farce and a fine feat of juggling, too....

Audiences who don't understand Italian may get more pleasure by consulting the program's synopsis before each act begins, to focus on the actors as much as possible. Or maybe ignore the supertitles for one of the play's three acts: the second one, with its long stretches of pure physical comedy, would be a natural choice....
Adding some kind of variety to the evening is probably a good idea. At three full hours, with two intermissions, this is a very generous immersion in pure buffoonery, even if it is the kind of buffoonery that inspired the term. Strehler's "Arlecchino" may be hallowed by years of acclaim, but the actual experience of watching it could be compared to sitting through a three-hour director's cut of a Hollywood comedy rated PG-13.

You can read the whole review here.

And now for the five more video clips. They still don't necessarily give us a clear sense of the whole production, and video of stage work is always a bit flat, but it's a start....

This first one, apparently made for television, is from 1954, so we can assume we are watching Marcello Moretti in the role. Spoiler alert: it's in Italian without subtitles and we're not seeing much in the way of physical comedy in this particular segment.




Fast forward to 1994 and a sweetly evocative slideshow / video featuring Ferruccio Soleri.



Also from 1994:




A lecture-demo (in Italian) by Soleri:




And, last but not least, a fast-paced highlight reel (not sure what year) with a glimpse right at the end of the "juggling" sequence mentioned in the Times.



Finally, you can view an excellent slide show of moments from the Strehler production here.

Complete Books: Carlo Goldoni (4!)

[post 169]

Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) was the Molière of Italy, the comic playwright who drew upon the traditions of the commedia dell'arte while creating tightly scripted plays. The best known of these is A Servant of Two Masters, a popular choice of modern theatre companies wanting to do a commedia-style show without actually working in improvisational mode.

When first written for the actor Antonio Sacco in 1743, the play had large sections open for improvisation. The complete script we know today came ten years later. Goldoni had come to see himself as a reformer, a writer who could add depth to the commedia's stereotypical stock characters and subtlety to the dialogue, now totally written rather than semi-improvised. In other words, he was a "commedia playwright," as oxymoronic as that may sound.

The servant with the two masters was Truffaldino, a commedia "zanni" similar to Arlecchino (Harlequin). Giorgio Strehler's landmark 20th-century production at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano in fact transformed Truffaldino into Arlecchino and retitled the piece Arlecchino, Servitore di Due Padroni. It's been in the Picolo repertoire since 1947 — that's ten years more than Ionesco's The Bald Soprano has been running in Paris! — and in all that time Arlecchino (photos above) has only been played by two actors, Marcello Moretti and Ferruccio Soleri.

Here's a Picolo video about Goldoni and the production:



Or you can read this introduction to the production from the Picolo program:

Staged for the first time in 1947 by Giorgio Strehler, Harlequin, Servant of Two Masters has become, over the course of the years, the Piccolo Teatro’s worldwide ambassador.
Like a phoenix rising from its ashes, this show is a challenge to the primarily ephemeral nature of theatre, without however being a museum piece.
On the contrary, the image that Giorgio Strehler has often used to define his Harlequin is that of a “living organism”, almost by definition requiring continuous evolution, change, and re-readings that, with the passing of time, have lead to the production of 11 versions which bear witness to the transformation of a custom, put to the test innovations in playwriting, and tell of the evolution of a director and a theatre. A true example of “memory in action”.
Harlequin is therefore to be considered as one of the founding productions in the history of the Piccolo, a kind of “pre-text” on which to recreate a tradition which favors the art of the actor, his virtuosity, and, as Strehler often maintained “the pleasure of acting” and “the pleasure of being”.In this sense Harlequin, in continuous evolution, expresses a kind of “auroral” phase of the theatre, understood and treasured by audiences from all around the world.

Update: Have come across a lot more material on the play. Simply go back to the future and you'll find it all at post 171.

Here is the complete text of the play in English translation.

The Servant of Two Masters


Next up are Goldoni's memoirs, which apparently are far from being 100% accurate, but then who's counting?

Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni


A Goldoni biography H.C. Chatfield-Taylor:

GoldoniBio


And finally, for the true Goldoni scholar — there's got to be one of you out there — one more book, Goldoni & the Venice of His Time by none other than Joseph Kennard, author of Masks & Marionettes, which you'll find two posts ago.

Kennard-Goldoni

A reminder that these .pdf documents can all be enlarged, read, downloaded, searched, and printed using the handy-dandy buttons at the bottom of each Scribd window.

Links:
• You can find part one of a documentary (in Italian) about the Picolo Teatro di Milano here.
• More plays by Goldoni at the Gutenberg Project or at Google Books.
• See the sidebar for a chronological list of all complete books available on this site.