Throw a bunch of characters on a stage with an inordinate number of doors, create an improbable situation, raise the stakes impossibly high, toss in a few pratfalls, keep it all going at a fast clip, and you've got yourself a farce. How does an actor make this particularly outrageous form of comedy work? Are there any special rules du genre, so to speak?
Farce dates back to 15th-century France. It originally consisted of improvised buffoonery that actors stuck into the texts of religious plays; these bits were called farce, the Old French word for stuffing. Elements of farce-broad clowning, acrobatics-appeared in lots of plays after that, but nowadays when we think of farce we think mainly of Georges Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear (1907), Brandon Thomas' Charley's Aunt (1892), and, from our own era, Italian playwright Dario Fo, Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Tenor, and Michael Frayn's Noises Off. Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Lucille Ball-all were consummate farceurs.
To succeed in farce requires a particular concentration and attention to detail and a willingness to commit totally and honestly to a ridiculous set of circumstances. It's been said that farce is very close to tragedy-and that's how seriously invested and larger-than-life you have to be about playing your intentions. Forget about being funny and just play the stakes for all they're worth, say the expert actors I talked to for this week's column. In farce, it's not the characters themselves that are funny, nor even the text (farce, traditionally considered lowbrow, usually lacks elevated dialogue and witty one-liners). Rather, the humor is in how the characters deal with the situation. And you'd better deal with it believably.
"Farce is no different from anything else," said Sashin Desai. He directed a current production of Noises Off (closing Mar. 5 at International City Theatre in Long Beach). "It has to be honest and real. If what you're doing doesn't come from the character and the situation, if you're not grounded in what's happening, then it's not believable. You can have 100 funny beats. If you play nine of them over the top, it's a failure."
Cast member Jodi Carlisle said this is the hardest theatre piece she's ever done, both physically (she soaks in a portable spa every night just to be able to walk the next day) and mentally. "Getting a feeling for the physicality of it was hard enough," she said. "But after that we had to go back to square one and realize these are real people, and we couldn't just do bits for bits' sake. Not trying to be funny, that was the hard part. When you hear laughter, the tendency is to do more and more. But you have to push the ego aside and focus on what's best for the piece." She observed that a lot of actors in farce tend to "put on the Three Stooges face, and it becomes about technique rather than reality."
Script, Not Shtick
Others agreed that making the audience laugh is mainly the job of the plot. Bay Area actor Dan Hiatt, who appeared in a Marin Theatre Company production of Noises Off a few years ago, said that the director, Richard Seyd, told the cast it was perfectly all right if the audience in the lobby after Act One was muttering, "Well, this isn't so funny." That has something to do with the particular three-act structure of Noises Off, an enormously clever play-within-a-play backstage farce with an elaborate set-up in Act One and a grand climax in Act Three. But Seyd was also reminding his actors about the necessity, in farce, to play it seriously.
"You have to go logically, step by step, until the whole thing spirals out of control," said Hiatt. He used the inimitable John Cleese in Fawlty Towers as an example: "What he wants is the most important thing in the world to him. He's absolutely passionate." Similarly, said Hiatt, when you're in a farce, "you have to realize that what's happening is deadly serious and absolutely logical to the characters."
Added Hiatt, "Everything has to be driven by the story. There's a danger in getting outside of that. If it's well written, you can ride it like a roller coaster."
Sharon Lockwood echoed Hiatt's opinions. "Whether it's confusion of identities or whatever," she said, "in farce, the comedy escalates and snowballs. Where it can go awry is if you're trying to graft something on that's not organic to the play." About to open in Ben Jonson's comedy The Alchemist at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, she noted that she and her fellow cast members, including such brilliant comic actors as Geoff Hoyle and Ken Ruta, keep relearning the same lesson, and it's a lesson that also applies to farce: "Don't try to do bits. Just play the situation. It always goes back to that." One gesture, said Lockwood, is better than four or five in rapid succession. It's about "essentializing."
Nor can you rely on charm or general comic ability when you're in a farce, noted veteran actor Hector Correa. Because you have so much physical business to deal with, you absolutely have to be specific, and you have to personalize. If necessary, you have to imagine the most extreme substitutions to make the high-stake nature of farce work for you in an authentic way. "If you're going to sell an improbable plot, you have to go for it 100 percent," he said. Farce, he observed, is not the place for subtlety. Experience with outdoor acting helps with the kind of bigness you need. "Of course, in a smaller space you don't have to work so hard-but on the inside it has to be just as extreme."
Blood, Sweat, and Cheers
Matthew Walker, in the Long Beach production of Noises Off, studied clowning with both the Ringling Brothers ("big and broad") and Bill Irwin ("relaxation and stillness"). That training helped him remember things like not hyperextending his hands when falling down a flight of stairs, which he does in Act Three. It also makes him very aware of the technical requirements of farce. He says that old reruns of the TV show Three's Company offer a good example of exquisite timing of the sort that you need. "Whenever Jack would get hit in the face with a door, you knew when that door opened, he'd be making this priceless face."
From his physical training Walker also learned when too much is too much. "In my business with the phone in Act Three of Noises Off, it would be easy to make it be about the phone-manipulating the phone cord, and so on," he said. "But it would be clowning for clowning's sake." On the other hand, he said, "There are places in Act Two where during rehearsal we'd say, "We have 30 seconds here and the author hasn't given us much, what would these characters do in this situation that's physical? And how are we going to vary it the third time to get the laugh?'"
He believes there are times when you have to work out comic bits. His general advice is to not be afraid to take risks, to not be timid or tepid: "The playwright has created people who are a little more put-upon than normal. So the actor has to make strong choices and have a willingness to go with them."
But he offers warnings, too: "You have to be fully realized in every moment. It's really important that you're not just flying through, getting from A to Z without going through B, C, and D."
For the Long Beach production of Noises Off, the cast had a three-week rehearsal with only four rehearsals on the actual set, with its demanding multiple levels and doors. "I think Frayn knew actors would be living this play whether they liked it or not," laughed Walker, noting that the onstage mishaps Frayn wrote into his play-within-a-play were reflected in reality as the actual cast struggled to adjust their timing and deal with the detailed stage business in a too-short rehearsal period. All the actors were able to use those mortifying sense-memories in their acting.
Shashin Desai noted other dangers inherent to farce: "With dialogue comedy-for example, No"l Coward's Private Lives-you are safer; the dialogue carries you through. In farce, if you raise your eyebrows too high, all of a sudden you're mugging." And, he added, you need good physical control, and-very important-you absolutely have to be a team player. "If one person doesn't show up with the right prop, it doesn't matter how good an actor you are," because immediately everyone onstage is left hanging in the breeze.
Hanging in the breeze or not, playing farce is immensely rewarding. Most actors, said Walker, relish the heightened reality of the genre, so different from the usual theatrical fare, especially if you tend to do a lot of commercial work. "I think playwrights who write farces have been around actors," he said. "They know, in a farce, the actor's soul just lights up." BSW