Of all theatrical terms, farce is the one used most loosely – and cynically. As Brian Rix, long a byword for the genre, puts it ‘All farces have the same thread running through them, though they may be presented differently: people with reputations to lose caught in situations where they can lose them.’, Farce is the most conservative dramatic form. It can be a great way to structure the plot of a comedy (especially a play or screenplay), but has no place in essays or other formal writing. There may be more beds in Ayckbourn’s Bedroom Farce than in any Feydeau and yet they are put to quite innocent use.
In farce, after the first ten minutes there’s no time to make jokes because they’re so busy running around; the laughs come from character and situation.
Farce is more akin to tragedy than it is to comedy.
Farce is also characterized by physical humor, the use of deliberate absurdity or nonsense, and broadly stylized performances. They’re rushing about dealing with it. With Ray Cooney back on stage, Michael Arditti looks at what goes into a good farce. The essence of a good farce is the slow buildup to absurdity. Only one setting and two hours of continuous drama/laughter. Secondly, a farce is built on a lie. The characters are believable – it is the situations that are slightly out of the ordinary.
As Mortimer neatly defines it: ‘Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions a minute.’.
Andy de la Tour, the author of three political farces and the most recent translator of Dario Fo, notes how Fo’s plays are always billed as farces even though, with the exception of Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay, the description is false. In my play Run for Your Wife, the hero is a bigamist. In English farce adultery is unacceptable; in French it’s simply expensive. Official website of Michael Arditti, author and critic.
Don’t Dress For Dinner by Marc Camoletti, author of Boeing Boeing, continues in its second year at the Apollo, while veteran British farceur Ray Cooney’s new play It Runs In The Family follows the record-breaking Run For Your Wife.
Mine is just one of them. In the beginning there is the plot. Definition of Farce. All the mistaken identities, deceptions, etc., are hard for a reader to follow.
Orton may have inverted it and Fo subverted it, but traditional farce still aims for the happy ending and endorses the status quo. The perfect farce script is like clockwork: the writer winds it up by carefully establishing certain credible premises, and then lets the whole thing unwind, with inevitable but startling logic. a ridiculous situation or event.
Feydeau declared ‘When in one of my pieces, two characters must not meet, I bring them together as soon as I can.’ Which is why so many writers, whether Ben Travers at the Aldwych, Brian Rix at the Whitehall or even Peter Rogers and Gerald Thomas in the Carry On films, have relied on a stock troupe of actors. This is for two reasons: first, a farce is confusing!
Traditional French farce has its roots in Moliere and commedia dell ‘arte; but the first generally accepted English version is little more than a hundred years old: The Private Secretary, adapted from the German by Charles Hawtrey in the 1880s and starring Herbert Beerbohm Tree. PLOT.
Cooney maintains that farce needs the most generous actors: ‘There’s no time to stand centre-stage making flowery speeches or intellectualising problems’. The art of a master farceur is supreme, as Marcel Achard said of Feydeau: ‘It is not simple to combine the skill of a clockmaker, an inventor, a chess-player, a mathematician and a comic writer.’, Despite the common ground of laughter, the world of farce is very different to that of comedy. Ray Cooney’s Two Into One opens at the Menier Chocolate Factory on March 19. My play doesn’t dwell on the tragedy, but the audience instinctively understands what is at stake. Michael Frayn, author of the most virtuosic modern farce. Modern audiences are pretty skeptical about such things, and will be inclined to believe that the characters ought to be able to catch their own mistakes. Jumping into a grave is tragic in Hamlet, whereas tampering with a coffin is farcical in Loot. A rule personal to me is “real time”. De la Tour adds: ‘You can make it about anything you want.
This is for two reasons: first, a farce is confusing! Slapstick humor just doesn’t translate very well in writing, which means it’s hard to make a good farce without a visual element.
Probably not. In John Mortimer’s view, ‘Comedy is to do with people saying funny lines.
Then I take the play back to the drawing-board and huge areas are then restructured, rewritten and generally reshaped. In 1870, Nietzche wrote ‘in our day, only the farce and the ballet may be said to thrive’. The result is to bypass normal audience identification. We may have appropriated French maids and French windows as farcical devices, but we have never embraced the French attitude to sex.
To sit racked with laughter in an audience six or seven hundred strong is very different from tittering to the canned laughter of a sit-com on TV. Subtlety hampers speed.
By the time it appears on the West End stage it must have acquired the precision, the elegance and the comfort of a Rolls-Royce. Ordinary people who are out of their depth in a predicament which is beyond their control and they are unable to contain. As Mortimer says, ‘the audience’s response has nothing to do with fellow feeling, because the actors themselves have no feelings.’ It is rather recognition that we might be in the situation ourselves coupled with relief that we are not. The word itself derives from the French for ‘stuffing’ and refers to the medieval custom of either ‘stuffing’ a programme with several short pieces or the liturgy with comic scenes. Again this is why the audience laughs. Whoever said history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce was right.’
When writing a farce on the basis of mistaken identity, however, it’s important to make things believable.
Many argue that the government today is a mere farce of what it started out as. Britain's greatest living farceur, Ray Cooney, offers his tips for writing the perfect farce.
But over time, those little mistakes can add up – and in the end, you’ll have a huge mess of confusion, with no character able to figure out what’s going on! Second, farce is often based on “sight gags,” or visual jokes.
I never get it exactly right the first time. If two characters are easily confused for one another (e.g. If you substitute musical for ballet, much the same may be said of the West End today. ‘The term is used to reassure people: it may be about a political subject, but don’t worry, it’s funny.’, To many audiences, laughter is the litmus test of farce. Historically, the term meant a literary or artistic production of little merit. Farce is actually pretty difficult to pull off in writing alone, which is why it’s far more common in visual media like film, TV, and theater. Despite such innocent pleasure, farce is frequently derided. I believe that the audience like to work for their laughter. However, before laying bare my formula, I would say that “farce” covers a wide area.
There would seem to be a point at which comedy becomes farce and having become farce it then flows into several farcical tributaries. Did you laugh? In the seventeenth century Dryden declared ‘The persons and actions of a farce are all unnatural and their manners false’ and his view would find many adherents today. People need to laugh, even in adversity, hence the traditional Jewish joke. I’m searching for something potentially tragic. My farces are pure concoctions.
Needless to say, this takes careful planning. All the mistaken identities, deceptions, etc., are hard for a reader to follow. The two hours spent in the theatre are two hours in the existence of the characters in the play. This emphasis on speed is also of the essence, both in the writing and playing of farce. Ray Cooney declares: ‘Someone once said the sole purpose of farce is to get laughs.’ That is a perfectly respectable ambition. The willingness to rewrite is essential.
I achieve this by having a play reading early on. It can be a great way to structure the plot of a comedy (especially a play or screenplay), but has no place in essays or other formal writing.
Farces have been written for the stage and film. The lies multiply, the character digs himself into a deeper hole. No passage of time between Acts 1 and 2. And generally, there are several characters forced to lie. If you give them visual cues, it’s much easier to dispel that confusion and keep the audience on track, even as the plot gradually goes crazy. Farce is actually pretty difficult to pull off in writing alone, which is why it’s far more common in visual media like film, TV, and theater. In theatre, a farce is a comedy that aims at entertaining the audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, and thus improbable. The characters aren’t standing centre-stage, spotlit, intellectualising about their predicament. Tragedy again.
If you want to write a good farce, the first step is to map out this gradual buildup of craziness.
Finally, never underestimate the intelligence of your audience. Changes in social convention have been reflected in the humour – as Cooney remarks ‘When I first played with Brian Rix, we were allowed only one “bloody” in an evening’ – but the conventional virtues of hearth and home continue to be extolled. I’m not searching for a “comedy” plot or a “funny” storyline. Farce is just for fun. His novels include Easter, Unity and A Sea Change. The play will get more and more tryouts, until I know it’s as perfect as it can be.
In the beginning there is the plot. So long as the lies are big enough, the plot convoluted enough and the person important enough, there will always be farce.
Whatever the cover-up, whether it’s a mistress in a cupboard orcorruption in high places, it’s still a farce.’, The action of a farce is propelled by panic, with characters lying to save face, which compounds their troubles since they now have to deal not only with the original problem but also the lie and hence they behave even more bizarrely.
The trail was a complete farce, the jury obviously knowing their verdict before proceedings even began. In Out of Order, it also brings laughter – because the audience know what is at stake for the characters in the play. This gap in perceptions can be a great source of laughs, and is also a good way to make social commentary along with your comedy, because it shows how a single situation can be viewed differently by people in different groups. Of course, that’s hard to do in a non-visual medium like writing. They must also have the technique, the stamina, the precision and the dexterity that farce demands.
Meanwhile, the first casualty of mental illness is a sense of humour. But if you saw that same thing happen in a cartoon, you might find it pretty funny. They are, however, French and, by definition, immoral. As Ned Sherrin says, ‘It’s the same complications: people put in impossible situations, but with different results.’ The discovery of two simple items of clothing – braces and a handkerchief – can produce the very different dramas of A Flea In Her Ear and Othello. This was followed by the ‘Court’ farces of Arthur Pinero; the most celebrated of which.