One Show, Two Styles
Richard Bean’s 2011 adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s 1746 Commedia dell’ Art scripted play A Servant of Two Masters, translated into Cockney English as One Man, Two Guvnors, opened this weekend at Seattle Center Theatre to a highly appreciative audience in splendid air-conditioning. Directed by Ken Michels and produced by Sound Theatre Company, it highlighted some interesting problems concerning the adaptation of physical comedy into a script written in a dialect known for verbal circumlocution and wit.
Following hard-upon the movie, Legend, the 2015 movie about the infamous Kray brothers- identical twin East End ( Cockney ) violent gangsters, one openly homosexual, the other bi-sexually inclined but married, active as night-club owners in the swinging London scenes of 1963, OMTG, deals comically with the same type of characters and milieu. By a stroke of enormous luck, one of the actors in this production, Luke Sayler, who plays one of the gangsters, actually looks exactly like Tom Hardy who played both Kray twins in Legend.
A very odd engagement party opens this farce. Charlie, a small time Cockney gangster, had arranged for his daughter, Pauline, to marry the homosexual thug Roscoe Crabb, (who has a twin sister) in a cover marriage. Unfortunately, Roscoe has recently been stabbed to death, so Pauline is free to marry the love of her life, the extremely fey wannabe actor Allan. That is… until Roscoe himself shows up at the engagement party …and then bedlam ensures.
Most of the bedlam is caused by Francis, the modern re-incarnation of the Commedia stock character “Truffalino” who is a “minder” or gofer/assistant to both Roscoe and the person who thought he had killed him. Much of the slapstick humor is generated because all three are staying in the same hotel, and each “guvnor” does not know that his manservant is working for the other guvnor, nor that the other one is staying there.
The strength of this production was in the period details and the music. Having actually been in middle school in 1963, I immediately recognized the dresses as things I actually wore, the colors, the prints and the styles were exactly what was fashionable then. Authenticity was everywhere on the set: from the ugly but accurate ratted-hair, to publicity posters for Beatles and Rolling Stones concerts, to a picture of a young and attractive Queen Elizabeth II
Under Kim Douglass’ musical direction, the music made this production, as well as served to cover the numerous scene changes. The audience was treated to Skiffle bands-the precursors to the bands the Beatles and the Stones eventually played in, a take off of a Beatles number and various other singing delights.
The difficulty with the production was that not everyone in the cast could handle the accents, for some of the actors the struggle with the accents affected their performances. One of the actors spoke above her optimal pitch rather then change her vocal placement to change the resonance in her voice, so that she sounded screechy. Many of the actors concentrated only on changing the pronunciation rather than the intonation pattern and used American intonation, so that the subtleties of the wit fell flat. Many lines were incomprehensible.
This was caused also by the difficulty of mixing physical comedy and there was plenty of it, with a script which had a lot of comedy just in the language; the two styles distracted the audience’s attention from the other. Ken Michael, the director has training in physical theatre, perhaps he should accept that he needed to hire a vocal/dialect coach as the show was not just mime; the actors actually spoke lines.
Some of the actors could handle the accents and delivered excellent performances. They were: Kayla Teel as Rachel Crabbe, Luke Sayler as Stanley Stubbers, Christine Clench as the fiancée, Madison Jade Jones as Dolly, the bookkeeper to the fiancée’s father Charlie, and Daniel Stoltenberg as the over-the top but highly entertaining fey actor.
Although the lead, David Roby managed the physical comedy well, he played his character too much for laughs, so he just seemed obnoxious. Comedy only works if the reality of the essential seriousness of the situation is acknowledged. Roby trivialized everything. There were some serious conflicts and he was not dealing with nice people who would forgive him for his various transgressions. There was comedy in the situation because there was potential tragedy. Reducing it all to trivia just made it fall flat.
Most of the audience laughed continually, I was in a very small minority in that I did not find the non-stop slap-stick humor very funny. Unfortunately, I have spent too much time with criminally minded Cockneys to find the accents acceptable.
But given the response of the audience, I would recommend this show.
One Man, Two Govnors Sound Theatre Company. Center Theatre. Seattle Center Armory ( Center House) Thu, Fri, Sat 7:30 pm. Sun 2:00 pm. Thu Aug. 27. Info. www. SoundTheatreCompany. Tickets: http://www.soundtheatrecompany.org/2016-theatre-season/one-man-two-guvnors/