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grubstlodger's review
3.0
I was surprised to find out that I sort of knew The Clandestine Marriage before I read it as I had seen a film version of it from the late nineties having picked it up as a video-cassette from a closing down rental place. The film had only a loose connection with the play though and my memories were pretty foggy.
I read this with the Dr Johnson’s House Reading Circle and I played Lord Ogleby, who I think probably gets many of the better lines. He’s a man who won’t admit that he’s ageing and still considers himself a beaux and a rake even if his body can’t quite get away with it. The ridiculousness of his romantic imaginings and the decrepit nature of his body create some laughs. He also gets fun interactions with his Swiss servant Canton, who is blessed with an an outrageous accent. Another phonetically driven accent is given to Mrs Heidelberg, a widower with a conception of herself as ‘qualaty’.
As fun as it was to perform with friends, I was left with a question that a person shouldn’t have at the end of a comedy, What was the central joke of the play?
Was it laughing at the impoverished court and the wealthy but tastless city-folk? Certainly some of the best jokes in the play were about the vulgar garden full of useless extravagances. (I certainly expected those winding paths to play more of a role in the story). There certainly were jokes about Sterling’s weakness fora healthy bank-balance and his habit of reducing everything to commercial interest - but he was the only character to really act like this. Was the main joke about a group of blustery men wheeling and dealing for a ‘prize’ they couldn’t win?
There was certainly a comic structure set up, but it didn’t use that structure to make many jokes. This doesn’t mean the play can’t be funny, there are always performative elements that can turn a slightly beige script into a laughfest (and some comedies fall flat from being overwritten and prescribed). There’s also my suspicion that a lot of the language games and such would have registered better to the original audience in much the same way a future audience probably won’t understand a Bob Mortimer ‘train man’ sketch.
When we read another, I know it will be fun - as company is (even over videocall) but I hope the play contains better jokes.
I read this with the Dr Johnson’s House Reading Circle and I played Lord Ogleby, who I think probably gets many of the better lines. He’s a man who won’t admit that he’s ageing and still considers himself a beaux and a rake even if his body can’t quite get away with it. The ridiculousness of his romantic imaginings and the decrepit nature of his body create some laughs. He also gets fun interactions with his Swiss servant Canton, who is blessed with an an outrageous accent. Another phonetically driven accent is given to Mrs Heidelberg, a widower with a conception of herself as ‘qualaty’.
As fun as it was to perform with friends, I was left with a question that a person shouldn’t have at the end of a comedy, What was the central joke of the play?
Was it laughing at the impoverished court and the wealthy but tastless city-folk? Certainly some of the best jokes in the play were about the vulgar garden full of useless extravagances. (I certainly expected those winding paths to play more of a role in the story). There certainly were jokes about Sterling’s weakness fora healthy bank-balance and his habit of reducing everything to commercial interest - but he was the only character to really act like this. Was the main joke about a group of blustery men wheeling and dealing for a ‘prize’ they couldn’t win?
There was certainly a comic structure set up, but it didn’t use that structure to make many jokes. This doesn’t mean the play can’t be funny, there are always performative elements that can turn a slightly beige script into a laughfest (and some comedies fall flat from being overwritten and prescribed). There’s also my suspicion that a lot of the language games and such would have registered better to the original audience in much the same way a future audience probably won’t understand a Bob Mortimer ‘train man’ sketch.
When we read another, I know it will be fun - as company is (even over videocall) but I hope the play contains better jokes.
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