Come on, guys and galls, this is supposed to be one of the best comedies ever written, but it gets no REALLY big laughs from a modern audience . None! And I bet you a free coaching session that you’ll not hear a casting-director laugh once if you do lines from it for an audition! And I’m not being rude, I’m just saying that modern actors need to understand the damned play better!
Because, my friends, there are two secrets in Wilde’s comedy which – can increase ANY actors’ confidence, and make it easier to play comedy in a hundred other plays and films. And I’m explaining both things here because I don’t want you paying to come to me for coaching this ! I want people to come to me for coaching when they want to be perfect!
The two secrets are, firstly the difference between the confidence of American people – even in the ‘High Society’ of the USA, and the confidence of being in the British upper-class, whom this play is all about.
American confidence is based on money, they own banks or they rob them! SO if they ever lose their money they will lose all their power. But the British upper-classes can never lose their power, because they have ‘titles’ which can never, ever be lost! Even if a Duke or a Duchess. lost all of their money there would be billionaires queuing up to marry them, because their ‘titles’ continue to their children, and the biggest companies in the world will pay millions just to have somebody with a ‘title’ on its board of directors, without having to do any work for it! A ‘Lord’ or a ‘Countess’ feels as if they have won the lottery every day of their lives! Nobody, except the Royals of other countries, can have the same confidence!
So when American actors perform the characters of Wilde they need to think of themselves as film stars who might end up becoming President!
But, – BUT BUT BUT – what makes these characters funny? What will make audiences want to laugh at hundreds of lines in this play? It is that these British characters may have the confidence of giants, but the brains of rather small flies! They may help run the government – if they are Lords – and know nothing about normal life. – They may own hundreds of acres of land and never meet anyone living there. – They may have people queuing to marry them and not have any real friends!
And this is the secret inside hundreds of modern film and tv scripts. The main characters in the tv series FRIENDS argue all the time but they stick together like glue. They often fail at their jobs but are always confident that another will come the next day. They are financially poor but happy to lend each other money whenever they are asked. They behave as if they had ‘titles! Nothing ever seriously goes wrong!
If we study the lines of this play ENOUGH we can see the gap between their confidence and their stupidity hidden in the simplest of lines. It just takes a LOT of study.
