Comedy is a mysterious business

We had our final show on Saturday night and it was probably our best. It was certainly one of my best performances and I finally worked how to deliver lines that had never got a laugh in a such way to extract a good rippling titter. If you can get a rippling titter you know it is only a matter of time and timing before the line will shoot up the hilarity curve from a titter to a snicker to a giggle to a chuckle to a cackle to a chortle to a snort, to a shriek to a scream to hysterical cachinnation and clutching of sides while rolling in the aisles with red faces like oversized Jaffas in suits. If you're really lucky an audience member may expire from laughing too much and then and only then can you legitimately say that you 'slayed' or 'killed them'.

I'm very happy the show has finished on such a high however it's always slightly fustrating that the season ends just when I'm starting to really hit my straps. I don't know about other theps however it usually takes me at least two weeks before I know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,  know when to walk away and know when to run. You can get a huge laugh one night and then deliver it in the exact same fashion the next show to be greeted with  the sound of one cricket clapping while a tumbleweed mounts the thrust. It's a bit of a mystery and the more you try and analyse and understand why it happened the more crickets and tumbleweeds start booking seats. An old improv saying we had was, 'Those who try to be funny are not, those who are funny don't try', and that little gem is what I fall back on when the only laughs I'm getting are from my fellow performers. I read a biography about the comedy genius Tony Hancock a few years ago and it seems as if he drove himself to suicide through constant self-analysis and trying to understand why things are funny. In his latter years he would be hilarious on the first take and then get progressively unfunnier as he desperately tried to replicate what he had done before.

I've just read that last paragraph and think I may have just finished it by arguing against the point I made in the middle. That's the thing with comedy as Tony found out, the more you think about it the more confused you get. Repetition of material will allow you to refine your delivery however repetition of delivery will not refine material.

That previous sentence is undoubedly the wankiest thing I have written on this blog so far.  I've a good mind to delete it however I won't because even though I don't think it means anything it may mean everything. That is an even wankier sentence.

On the other end of the seasonal spectrum are those plays that run for ever and a day with matinees thrice a week. I'm thinking Le Mis, Cats, Four Flat Whites in Italy and the mother of all long-running shows, The Mousetrap.The Mousetrap opened in 1952 and has had over 24,000 performances...mostly to Americans. There is a whopping great twist at the end of this murder mystery that the audience are asked not to reveal however I'm going to reveal it now....the murderer is M Night Shyamalan!

I'll wait to you all stop laughing....

David Raven played Major Metcalf for 4575 performances and for that he gets a measly two line Wikipedia entry. I've tried to find a photo of him with no luck however I did come across this cracker of a Repertory photo from a Mousetrap production at The Patio Playhouse in Escondido in Califormia.

Poor David Raven. He gave up 4575 of his evenings and Sunday afternoons to entertain hundreds of thousands of people and you can't find one solitary photo of him on the web yet these guys who probably only played for three weeks like myself pop up five pages in. I bet David was a true-pro as well and never once phoned anything in while letting the audience shape his performance is subtle ways they could never realise or understand. I salute you David Raven and I salue the wonderful cast and crew who made my 24 performances so enjoyable and fulfilling.

Oh yeah, Detective Sergeant Trotter is the murderer in The Mousetrap and the murder weapon is a mousetrap so now you can save your money and go and see some edgy real theatre like this and this.