With playgoing on hiatus, the contributors to New York Stage Review have decided to provide our readers with alternate discussions of theater: think pieces, book/music/video reviews, and the like. We would much rather be reviewing live theater, and we look forward to the day when the curtain rises once again.
People often ask those of us who’ve spent many thousands of nights in playhouses to tell them our favorite this, our favorite that, and the like. I always defer, with an answer somewhat along the lines of, “It depends.”
But if you were to ask me—go ahead, ask me—what were the two funniest performances I’ve seen over too many years of playgoing, I would have an instant answer. One was given by Phil Silvers, at an underpopulated matinee of the 1972 revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. I moved down to the empty front row of the Lunt and the star—seeing a thoroughly convulsed teenager lapping up every gesture—took aim. Which is not, mind you, germane to today’s discussion.
The other, a 2011 performance which nine years and some 400 (?) shows later still sets me laughing as I type this, is that of James Corden in Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors. I happened upon this farce—a modern adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s Venetian blockbuster of 1743, Servant of Two Masters, although don’t let that stop you—one night at the National Theatre in that summer of 2011. I won’t even try, at this point, to describe Corden’s performance. He was all over the stage, all over the floor, juggling plates and characters and plotlines with such voraciousness and such relish that you (and the thousand other customers) gave up on decorum and laughed yourself past exhaustion to exhilaration.
Can such things be replicated night after night, week after week, for two years? Yes. At the end of the initial run, in September 2011, One Man was broadcast worldwide from the Lyttleton via National Theatre Live. While waiting for Corden & Co. to skip across the pond for a Broadway stint, I wasn’t about to miss the chance to see the play again, even on screen. This being my first viewing of a National Theatre Live presentation, I was pleased and somewhat surprised to find that nothing was lost in the process. You did not have that same thrill of live theater, which in the case of One Man included Corden pulling volunteers and watercress sandwiches out of the orchestra seats. But the broadcast worked just as well, with the closeups on screen amplifying the power of the physical humor and stoking the overall hilarity.
I returned to the play when it opened at the Music Box in April 2012 and once again before it closed on Labor Day weekend. All four performances were equally expert. Corden continued to grow in the part, or at least to find nuances which seemed to keep him every bit as engaged as the people out front dying with laughter.
The point of this discourse, at this moment in time, is to alert you—one and all—that the folks at National Theatre Live are responding to the current theatrical hiatus by serving up their presentation of One Man, Two Guvs as a gift to us all. For seven days and seven nights, beginning Thursday, April 2, you can watch Corden and his cohorts go through their paces at will. The show will be aired at 7PM UK time (which is to say, 2PM EST) on Thursday, and remain available on demand through April 8.
The National Theatre will follow this with Sally Cookson’s production of Jane Eyre, starting April 9; Bryon Lavery’s production of Treasure Island on April 16; and Simon Godwin’s production of Twelfth Night (with Tamsin Greig as “Malvolia”) on April 23, with more to come, presumably, in May. But the big news is that for seven days you have One Man, Two Guvnors on tap, ’round the clock.
Mr. Corden—who as it happens was at one point announced to follow Phil Silvers’ footsteps into Pseudolus’s toga on the way to the forum, and wouldn’t we like to see that?—has unaccountably disappeared from our stages for the gold-lined coffers of network telly, where he is ubiquitous. (One hears tell that he has been recently cited making commercials for coffee pods.) Ah, well! This week, at any event, you can see him at his unsurpassable best on your computer screen. And those of you with an interest in comedy might do well to watch One Man, Two Guvnors twice or thrice this week. I mean, what good is sitting alone in your room… if you can spend the hours laughing?
When I took my seat for my last viewing of the play at the Music Box, I stepped past a frail and fragile man sitting two seats over on the aisle. During the first act, I noticed that he was all but collapsing with laughter—like me—but to an extent that with each extreme blast of hilarity I wondered if he might expire right there. But no; Corden’s mugging—not content to leave a laugh alone, he would lasso it and egg the audience on to create another two or three jolts before turning his attention back to the script—seemed to revive and reinvigorate this old man.
At intermission, I was surprised to realize that this fellow was a somewhat shrunken but resilient Mike Nichols, who himself knew a thing or two about laughter. The image of Corden slaying Nichols, with wave after wave, remains with me: A fitting match of masters.
The National Theatre Live production of One Man, Two Guvnors can be viewed April 2, 2020 through April 8 at youtube.com/user/ntdiscovertheatre
