Uncontrolled guffaws have recently been heard from our sitting room, thanks to our National Theatre's generous offer of free Thursday evening streaming of a selection of their shows during this time of coronavirus; the first show was a beautifully filmed version of their stage production of One Man, Two Guvnors. Each stream will be available on YouTube until the following Thursday.
For a long time I made the pretence of not enjoying farce or slapstick humour - over-exposure to pantos as a child perhaps. (Why did Widow-Twanky always end up with wallpaper and a bucket of paste?) But after watching One Man, I now realise I am as much of sucker for a good farce as I am for rom-coms. I probably began to change my mind after I saw Michael Frayn's Noises Off - I had always admired him from the early days when he wrote a humorous column every Tuesday in the Manchester Guardian (as it then was). I now appreciate that, for cinematic comedy of that kind, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin were the geniuses of their day. Another belly-laugh-inducing example of the genre is The Play That Goes Wrong put on by Mischief Theatre, performances of which we can only hope will continue at the Duchess Theatre in London when normal life resumes.
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