Farce and Contemporary Drama: II

Abstract

In discussing the work of Ben Travers and the Whitehall and post-Whitehall teams of writers, I suggested an overlap between the farce worlds there created and the world of music-hall as traditionally experienced in such solo performers as George Robey, Harry Tate, Max Miller, and its modern derivatives — radio and television comedy half-hours like ‘Take It From Here’, ‘The Goon Show’, and ‘Hancock’s Half-Hour’. It is an overlap that is of course explicable in terms of the history of drama, since both music-hall and farce have common roots in a comic tradition going back through the commedia dell’arte and the medieval sottie to Greek and Roman farce. In the farces earlier discussed, such features as the double act, with its cross-talk routines, the physical misadventures of the characters, elaborate pieces of comic business or ‘lazzi’, the use of catch-phrases and stereotype characters — all are evocative of music-hall entertainment. So too is the occasional breaking of the fourth-wall illusion in moments when the character steps outside his role to comment, or in a form of soliloquy invites the audience to share the plight brought upon him by role-switching.