This is the saddest comedy I ever saw. "Amateurs" by Tom Griffin.
It's about an opening night party for the actors in a play called "The Undertaker's Melody" - I couldn't help thinking of Six Feet Under. One of the guests is the world's worst ventriloquist, another the world's least funny comedian. The husband of the hostess is deranged because of the sudden death of their young son. The jokes tend to be dark and edged - jokes that make you laugh and grit your teeth at the same time. It's a comedy that makes you uncomfortable even before the party's guest of honour has a heart attack.
The best parts were when it abandoned comedy altogether and the actors could get their teeth into the parts: when the nerdy schoolteacher vents his feelings about his wife's infidelity, when the up-and-coming starlet reveals her true loneliness.... When the hostess reveals her deep loyalty to her damaged husband.
One of the reviewers compared this play to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and I thought of that while I was watching too, though I couldn't quite pin down why. The sense that people hide their true feelings with banalities? The sense that even the troubled can be funny, while caught in the unending loop of their troubles?
The only gag I really liked was the one about the chairs. In the first scene, the hostess asks her husband to move some chairs to the living room so there will be places for the guests to sit. He does. And throughout the play, he continues to do so, so the room is slowly filled with different kinds of chairs: rocking chair, stool, ottoman, kitchen chair, lawn chairs, folding chairs, stacking chairs, plastic chairs, Queen Anne chairs, and even a few chairs from the attic with their seats missing - "They're okay," says the husband, "as long as no one sits on them."
It's about an opening night party for the actors in a play called "The Undertaker's Melody" - I couldn't help thinking of Six Feet Under. One of the guests is the world's worst ventriloquist, another the world's least funny comedian. The husband of the hostess is deranged because of the sudden death of their young son. The jokes tend to be dark and edged - jokes that make you laugh and grit your teeth at the same time. It's a comedy that makes you uncomfortable even before the party's guest of honour has a heart attack.
The best parts were when it abandoned comedy altogether and the actors could get their teeth into the parts: when the nerdy schoolteacher vents his feelings about his wife's infidelity, when the up-and-coming starlet reveals her true loneliness.... When the hostess reveals her deep loyalty to her damaged husband.
One of the reviewers compared this play to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and I thought of that while I was watching too, though I couldn't quite pin down why. The sense that people hide their true feelings with banalities? The sense that even the troubled can be funny, while caught in the unending loop of their troubles?
The only gag I really liked was the one about the chairs. In the first scene, the hostess asks her husband to move some chairs to the living room so there will be places for the guests to sit. He does. And throughout the play, he continues to do so, so the room is slowly filled with different kinds of chairs: rocking chair, stool, ottoman, kitchen chair, lawn chairs, folding chairs, stacking chairs, plastic chairs, Queen Anne chairs, and even a few chairs from the attic with their seats missing - "They're okay," says the husband, "as long as no one sits on them."
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