Comedy Tonight

In recent years, I've dreamed of being a theater and opera critic. Even if the salary is small, the perks (free tickets!) more than compensate. But there's one flaw in my critical apparaisal of shows: I cannot stand comedy. It's inexplicable. Charles Isherwood recently wrote a New York Times article about feeling like the only one in the theater who's not laughing. It's happened to me--at just about every comedy I've ever attended.

I try to enjoy myself, I really do. I'll walk into A Behanding in Spokane after reading a rave review, expecting the best. I'll even force a little chuckle near the beginning to warm up. But at some point, dousing teenagers with oil and threatening to light them on fire fails to be funny (even though the rest of the audience is in hysterics).

I can't blame it on the violence, either. Light comedy is worse than dark. At a farce, all I can do is sit in silence and disdainfully wonder what everyone finds so amusing about another butt-slap or sexual innuendo.

I laugh at the opera, it's true, and at Shakespeare. Obscure literary references cause me to cackle in otherwise-silent theaters. But that's the laughter of superiority, the reflexive act of proving to the crowd that I understood each joke. Rarely is anything truly chuckle-worthy.

The exception is brilliant satire or unbearable irony. Truly good satire, like some of that displayed in A Little Night Music occasionally provokes a broad smile. And the ironic scenes of The Scarlet Pimpernel and its sequels often have me rolling on the floor. (Again, it's the laughter of cogniscence of my superiority, this time to the book's characters.) Woody Allen's philosophical parodies in Love and Death lead to loud guffaws. Even Mel Brooks can earn a chuckle, as when his account of the French revolution features a voraciously knitting crone. Unfortunately, the existence of such laughter-worthy material is the exception rather than the rule.

I'm left wondering: what's wrong with me? Comedies are written for the public to enjoy and, in general, they accomplish their aim. Some distant part of me understands--something in me admires the writing in shows like A Behanding in Spokane and even recognizes the humor in a particularly well-crafted monologue or two. But this cognitive reaction is hardly the emotion the play (or book or film) is intended to inspire. That emotion never comes.

The "why" remains a mystery. For now, I suppose, I'll just stick to my dramas and tragedies. West Side Story and Phantom of the Opera ought to run indefinitely, and a Les Miserables revival is always just around the corner. There, tears are a reaction I see and understand--when my eyes aren't too clouded by my own.