This is supposed to be one of the best comedies ever written, but it gets NO big laughs from a modern audience . None! No really big laughs. What is going wrong!?
Some people will think this is a strange thing to say, but – honestly – if modern actors learn two simple things which will make this play a success to modern audiences, they will also know how to perform modern comedy in tv and films! Honestly!
I have seen actors use audition monologues from this play and never make a casting-director laugh once: but this play has two secrets which should help actors do any comedy well.
And this is important because there are hundreds of these ‘classy’ characters in other plays, tv series and films, – and the confidence of they have, and the madness inside the characters, is all an actor needs to know to make an audience laugh at it very loudly, and – please, reader, – even if you may think me daft to say so – it is the same confidence and madness in every episode of FRIENDS and THE OFFICE .
The one fact in the play which can help an American actor’s confidence, lies in the giant difference between the ‘High Society’ of America and the ‘Upper-class’ of the UK ! One giant difference.
The ‘high society’ of America is made up of people who are rich, so if they lose their money they also lose their power: but British upper-classes never lose their power, because they have ‘titles’ which can never be lost! Ever! If Brits with a ‘title’ like Duke or Duchess and they do eve lose their money there will be millionaires queuing up to marry them, because the ‘title’ will pass onto their children, and there are companies willing pay them millions just to have a title listed in its board of directors! And the Lord or the Countess won’t have to do any work for the money!
So these Brits are able to have more confidence than American billionaires. They feel as if they have won the lottery every day! So when American actors perform these characters they need to imagine they are huge film stars, and rich ones, and ones who might end up being elected as President!
These Brits may seem old-fashioned, and not connected to modern comedy. But the ‘aristocrats’ still exist today, and are not going to change. It is almost impossible to ‘give up’ a title, and if a Duke or a Duchess tried to – which is just legally possible, – they would lose all their friends, throw hundreds whom they employ out of work, and destroy the charities which rely on their support. And if the British Royal Family tried to give up their titles, the whole UK tourist industry would collapse !
But what makes this funny? What makes an audience laugh at this ‘wild’ confidence? It is one simple fact.
They have a gap in their brains! They may have the confidence of a giant but the brain of a fly!
They may help run the government 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 close friends. They have confidence for no reason!
This confidence makes the main characters in FRIENDS all hysterical. They fight together every day but stick to each other like glue! They fail at their jobs but are confident another will appear in a second! They are financially poor but happy to lend each other money. They behave as if they had ‘titles’!
The luxury in which these characters might live is shown in the first twelve words of this play, – actually in two words, in the opening two lines.
Scene: A morning room in Algernon’s flat in Half-Moon Street. A piano is heard from an adjoining room.
“Half-Moon Street” still exists, a tiny road round the corner from Buckingham Palace, where the present Royal Family lives, and where Queen Victoria lived at the time of this play. Every house used to be and still is – owned by exiled Kings and Queens, old Duchesses and Dukes, and retired Bishops. It is like a Mafia for the upper-class, with a real King or a Queen as its Godfather!
The apartment in this play – like one pictured above – would sell for twenty million dollars today because of its location. So when actors perform on a very simple set, they just imagine they are in the home of an A-list film-star.
The second sentence states – “A piano is heard from another room ” so there must be a second sitting-room because a piano would not be in a bedroom. This means the apartment is huge, and may have other rooms in the basement where servants live, adding more to its value. It is like an American having a home near the White House .
Let us now see the comedy of this play’s most famous character . . .
‘LADY’ BRACKNELL
The gap between her confidence and her empty brain is like the Grand Canyon. Actors need to find this in all of her lines, because – sadly – her part has become a kind of ‘comic turn’ for some actors, who often perform her as a kind of ‘dragon-lady’, droning every line in the same deep British accent to get a few laughs. But the secrets hidden in Lady Bracknell’s lines are not hard to find.
There is a small problem nowadays when she is sometimes played by a male actor, which may amuse some audiences, but having a male actor stops the audience seeing the Lady’s most important quality, – that she is a mother! She is the worst mother in England and believes she is the best!
And there are two ways in which most actors say her lines. One is to make all her lines sound sarcastic, but actors cannot play all their lines the same way, because anything we repeat becomes boring. The (far) more interesting way is to realize that Lady Bracknell’s choice of words is just a big mistake, a series of accidents, which she does not notice!
To give one example, in these three lines she is interviewing JACK, to decide if he would be a suitable husband for her daughter. And she asks him –
LADY BRACKNELL: Do you smoke?
JACK: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
LADY BRACKNELL: I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind.
If she is being sarcastic, suggesting that smoking is the only ‘occupation’ most men have, then she is obviously wrong, unkind, and not funny. An audience will only laugh is because they feel they should!
But if we study her lines we find that she knows nothing about men at all. She has never seemed to like them, and the few she now meets only want to talk to her daughter; even her husband “spends most of his time in an upstairs room”; and at the end of the play she cannot remember the name of her brother! But she believes she is a world expert on the subject of men!
She is surprised and happy to hear that Jack smokes cigarettes! She thinks he may be a perfect husband for her daughter. She has no idea that men might have other ‘occupations’, and may even say her line with a touch of kindness!
And actors playing her should sympathize with her stupidity. When she was young she will have attended a girls-only school, and never allowed to have male friends. Even now most men she meets are in the ‘House of Lords’ ( a section of the British Parliament) , and she no idea at all about what they do! When she twice gives an opinion on politics she is probably repeating something she has heard from one of the Lords, and she has no clue as to what her opinion might mean, – but the confidence to say it as if she were her country’s President!
She has great social importance but no intelligence, confidence but no experience, and her only interest is that her daughter must marry the ‘right’ man, which means one that she likes!
Another example of her blindness comes when her daughter suddenly says she has become engaged, to which Lady Bracknell replies:-
“You will be informed when you are engaged.”
And – as with her views about men and cigarettes, – there are two obvious ways of saying the line.
She might be her just being unkind to her daughter, denying her the chance to marry the man she loves because she is her mother and can do so! But if Lady Bracknell is a bully audiences won’t laugh at her. A more wonderful – and ridiculous – explanation is that Lady Bracknell believes her daughter has only made a mistake, just forgetting the rule that a mother decides whom her daughter should marry! Lady Bracknell is not really angry with her daughter, she is just very surprised! And she now believes her daughter will end the engagement, having been reminded of the ‘rule’, and probably the poor girl will.
So the scene is not about an unkind, sarcastic mother, it is about a sweet, decent girl being denied the chance of love by a mother who does not know what love is! BRACKNELL thinks her daughter has been absent minded, and if the audience laughs it is because it is Lady Bracknell who has lost her mind!
Lady Bracknell has the wealth of a young Donald Trump, the authority of a U.S.Marine Colonel, the confidence of Malvolio, the voice of an old Shakespeare actor, – and the brain of an ant !
This is the clue to playing characters in hundreds of other comedies. The main characters in the tv series FRIENDS are funny because each has great confidence but only one interest. Matt LeBlanc, as Joey, has huge self-confidence but mainly about sex and food. In BETTER CALL SAUL Bob Odenkirk has total confidence about being a good lawyer, but no conscience about breaking the law. In SUITS Sarah Rafferty as Donna understands all the selfish people employing her, and doesn’t care!
Contrast can be funny: it just has to be acted truthfully!
