THEATRE
ARGUABLY THE hardest form of theatre to write well is comedy, and of all the options available – satire, sketch, alt, black – farce seems to offer the least opportunities to also make pointed or poignant social commentary.
With its larger-than-life characterisations, slapstick, implausible plot twists and physical humour, the genre has been unfashionable in recent years. Its roots, however, go back to Greece and the earliest theatre. It evolved into the Italian Commedia dell’arte, was refined by the French and made common by Shakespeare. It influences Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest and reaches its modern zenith in Noises Off. In television it’s the stuff of I Love Lucy and Fawlty Towers. In film, it’s the fallback position for Hollywood and Bollywood comedies.