A few words about comedy, which most especially apply to farce: The actors can NEVER play it for laughs. They have to play it as if it were real, and the most important thing ever: something their lives depend on (or so it seems at the time). The best example most of us know intimately is I Love Lucy -- the characters are deadly serious about whatever they're doing; it's the situations that create the comedy -- but when you start looking, it's everywhere. It's in Noises Off, which I've been lucky enough to see twice, once on Broadway and once in PA...and it's most especially in the version of this play I found on YouTube.
Whoever said, "Tragedy's easy; comedy's hard" couldn't have been more correct. Yet comedy is always undervalued, while tragedy gets all the admiration. (With the possible exception of some of Shakespeare's comedies and The Importance of Being Earnest.)
Now for some background on the play itself:
Lend Me a Tenor is a comedy by Ken Ludwig. The play was produced on both the West End (1986) and Broadway (1989). It received nine Tony Award nominations and won for Best Actor (Philip Bosco) and Best Director (Jerry Zaks). A Broadway revival opened in 2010. Lend Me a Tenor has been translated into sixteen languages and produced in twenty-five countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
I particularly liked the set design:
The play takes place in 1934, in a hotel suite in Cleveland, Ohio. The two-room set has a sitting room with a sofa and chairs at left and a bedroom at right. A center "stage wall" divides the two rooms, with a door leading from one room to the other. (Throughout the play, the audience can see what's happening in both rooms at the same time.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
This version is from The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute and was performed at the Marilyn Monroe Theater. I thought the opening was rather stiff, but after about ten minutes the players relaxed & the fun began.
Enjoy!:
The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute (originally the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute) is an acting school located at 115 East 15th Street between Union Square East and Irving Place in the Union Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, as well as at 7936 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. The school was founded by the noted acting teacher Lee Strasberg in 1969 to teach and promote the techniques of method acting.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Lee Strasberg (born Israel Strassberg; November 17, 1901 – February 17, 1982) was an American actor, director and acting teacher. [snip] In 1951, he became director of the non-profit Actors Studio, in New York City, considered "the nation's most prestigious acting school".
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Method acting probably deserves its own diary, but I'm not the person to write it. But here's Wiki to the rescue:
In the dramatic arts, method acting is a group of techniques actors use to create in themselves the thoughts and feelings of their characters, so as to develop lifelike performances. Though not all Method actors use the same approach, the "Method" refers to the method of teaching the craft of acting, which was created by Constantin Stanislavski in order to teach concepts of acting to his students. Later, Stanislavski's method of teaching acting was adapted by Lee Strasberg for American actors.
snip
Method acting has been described as having "revolutionized American theater". While classical acting instruction "had focused on developing external talents", the Method was "the first systematized training that also developed internal abilities (sensory, psychological, emotional)".
http://en.wikipedia.org/...