Toffs

Farce, it is said, is simply tragedy at double speed. An Aldwych farce, on the other hand, might be called tragedy at half speed. But this proves no bad thing.

I knew nothing about the Aldwych farce tradition, except that they made films of some of them. Leslie Halliwell was a big fan. Oh, and Ben Travers, who write the plays, figures in an excellent story about Lindsay Anderson. Travers was celebrating his ninetieth birthday and somebody asked what he’d like on his tombstone. An urgent sort of question when you’re ninety. “I think I should put ‘And now the fun begins!'” said Travers. Lindsay Anderson was also there, so they asked him the same thing. “I think I should put,” said Lindsay, according to most versions of the story, “‘Surrounded by fucking arseholes.'”

That’s the version you mostly hear, but the version I was told by Anderson actor John Bett, I insist, was “STILL surrounded by fucking arseholes.” Much better, isn’t it? That way he’s not only insulted his putative graveside neighbours of the future, but his present company.

Anyway, I had little hope for my first Aldwych farce. I was unable to get copies of THARK or ROOKERY NOOK — a pity, I like those titles, so I settled for A CUCKOO IN THE NEST (1933). These early adaptations tended to be directed by star Tom Walls. Other members of the troupe are Ralph Lynn, Gordon James and Robertson Hare, but there are a couple of better-known thesps here too — Cecil Parker and Roger Livesey.

Are the Aldwych farceurs Awful British Comedians? I’m inclined to give them a pass. Hare is playing a vicar, which is always a drag, so I can’t say much for him. James is good fun in a minor character role. Lynn is a silly ass lead with a monocle who looks like he should be advertising cream sherry. He’s slightly awful, but somewhat skilled. When the material is there to support him, he can be rather good. And Tom Wall is very good indeed — he has the funniest character, which he apparently tended to play variations on throughout his career — a drink-fuddled retired major called Bone. Major Bone. His entire schtick is getting drunk, looking for drink, bemoaning the lack of drink, oh and being truculent. He has a fine line in truculence — I wondered if he might have inspired the more recent character of Count Arthur Strong a bit. There are also strong pre-echoes of The Fast Show‘s Sir Rowley Birkin too. I can understand people saying they don’t find him funny in other things, where he wants to be seen as a suave loverboy and it’s all rather unfortunate — but this is a comedy drunk for the ages.

Each of the characters has their single defining trait which you grasp at once and then get endless variations on. Most of them are quietly or loudly dotty. Each time a new one appears you have the fun of wondering for a second what his defect will be, and then you find out. There are some really fine stupid conversations in this, and what made me suspect I’d like it was Ralph Lynn, he of the screw-in monocle and raspy voice, assuring his wife that the train CAN’T be “nearly leaving” — trains are either leaving or they aren’t. Fatuous mansplaining, of course, but also nice comedy illogic.

The trouble with farce is that when it’s plot-driven it’s very hard to get laughs before the crisis has kicked in, but Travers shows this problem to be a false one: if your characters are rich and funny there are laughs to be got just from them manoeuvring through life. Of course everything gets better once you have a strong comic situation.

I’ve now watched a few of these and this one is still my favourite: things get a little icky once Lynn and Walls start behaving like sexual creatures. Neither one is somebody you want to think about being sexual. Here, Lynn’s whole story is about desperately trying to avoid the appearance of impropriety — he’s FORCED to spend the night in a hotel room with a nice French lady, and he HATES it. Major Bone has some grim moments of lustiness, but I found I could handle the discomfort.

Everybody in this is some kind of British archetypal lunatic, and there’s good angry fun had at the terrible inn, with its religious maniac woman in charge (Mary Brough) — shades of THE OLD DARK HOUSE, which it wouldn’t take much nudging to turn this film into. Escpecially since we have Alfred Junge as designer, making the pub look like a crooked charcoal sketch with floorboards laid in colliding swathes. Travers, like Val Guest, is very sex-positive but actually the funny stuff is a cold fury at the awful aspects of British life, and amusement at male sexual anxieties.

As director, Walls probably never became really fluid, but there are several moments when the fragmenting of the play, done to facilitate cross-cutting, gets actual laughs just by abruptly shifting scene. Directing cutting avant la nouvelle vague, delightfully unexpected in this slightly stolid film.

A CUCKOO IN THE NEST stars Fred Tutt; Darcy Tuck; Queen of Ardenberg; Dear Mr. Binky Rudd; Death; Louise Stoatt; Lord Loam; Cherry Buck; and Colonel Blimp.

Verdict: Walls and Lynn are awful when they’re being “sexy” but they’re very skilled farceurs.