Tag: Carlo Goldoni
One aspect of the whole One Man, Two Guvnors phenomenon that several of us physical comedy mavens have commented on is that today’s theatre-going audience, no matter how sophisticated, has seen little if any really well-done physical comedy, and certainly not the heavy dose they get served by this production. So far I’ve seen the show once on film (National Theatre Live series), once in previews here in New York, and then again on opening night. The response of the live audience was great, with both performances earning hearty, non-stop laughter and a standing ovation at the end.
Just two hours before yesterday’s Broadway premiere of the London smash hit, One Man, Two Guvnors, Cal McCrystal sat down with Jim Moore (vaudevisuals.com) and myself for this interview about his work on the show. Significantly, Cal is listed not as an assistant or as a choreographer, but as its “Physical Comedy Director,” his name immediately following that of overall director Nicholas Hytner in the program. Jim and I had already caught the show in previews and absolutely loved it, so when Hilary Chaplain offered to set up this interview, we jumped at the chance to talk shop.
I wasn’t in London at the right time to see the smash hit, One Man, Two Guvnors, but that didn’t stop me from writing about it in this post, and I did subsequently catch a broadcast of it here in NYC as part of the National Theatre Live program. The title of that post was “Commedia Conquers London — Is Broadway Next?” and the answer is yes! — it begins its Broadway run on April 6th. Finally I’ll get to see it live on stage, and I’m hoping many of you will too. Highly recommended!!
Whether or not you’ve been following all my posts on commedia dell’arte and the various Carlos (Goldoni, Gozzi, Mazzone-Clementi), whether or not you think commedia is the holy grail of ultimate theatricality or merely a corny, hoary, outdated performance style, you will probably be surprised to learn that a modern adaptation of Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters is the hottest ticket in London.
La commedia dell’arte è nata in Italia nel XVI secolo e rimasta popolare sino al XVIII secolo. Non si trattava di un genere di rappresentazione teatrale, bensì di una diversa modalità di produzione degli spettacoli. Le rappresentazioni non erano basate su testi scritti ma dei canovacci detti anche scenari, i primi tempi erano tenute all’aperto con una scenografia fatta di pochi oggetti. Le compagnie erano composte da dieci persone: otto uomini e due donne. All’estero era conosciuta come “Commedia italiana.”
We finally finish our saga of public domain books in English about the commedia dell’arte with these two offerings.
As is often the case, since writing my post on Carlo Goldoni last week — read that post first! — I have stumbled upon a bunch of new stuff that I would have included had I been as wise and knowledgeable then as I am now. The new (to me) material is on Giorgio’s Strehler’s famous production of Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters. My first stumble was via an Adam Gertsacov post about Strehler on his clownlink.com blog, which led me along a virtual path to two NY Times articles and five more videos.
Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) was the Molière of Italy, the comic playwright who drew upon the traditions of the commedia dell’arte while creating tightly scripted plays. The best known of these is A Servant of Two Masters, a popular choice of modern theatre companies wanting to do a commedia-style show without actually working in improvisational mode.
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My first book (1976)
My book Clowns has long been out of print, but you can borrow it for two weeks at a time from the Internet Archive. More information is available here.
My second book (2015)
Visual and verbal humor for the cognitively and artistically curious! Available here.
“A book to treasure!”
—Bill Irwin