BREATH OF FRESH AIR
Laughter is ‘Guvnors’ medicine
James Corden might not be a vaccine for the coronavirus pandemic, but he sure is therapeutic. The host of “The Late Late Show” on CBS is the star of “One Man, Two Guvnors,” a National Theatre production so consistently hilarious that you might just fall off your couch and knock out the dog.
They should be piping this glorious thing into hospital wards with the oxygen. Laughter heals, folks! And, yes, you can snort and guffaw right into your mask. Whatever your irCcHuRm stJaOnNceEsS, this cheeNrEin g erDiAenILc e ts
free, guv. Britain’s flagship theater has made one of its greatest hits of all time available on YouTube for the next week (the gift to the world ends Thursday). It’s theoretically a fund-raiser, but you don’t have to pony up. And if you’re wondering how James Corden became James Corden, how he went from provincial obscurity in Uxbridge to the maestro of Carpool Karaoke, then here is your answer.
What will be more helpful tonight? A presidential press briefing or watching Corden get his tongue caught inside a mousetrap? Those two things might sound strangely similar, but I’m telling ya’, pick the latter.
As penned by Richard Bean, adapted from the Italian farceur Carlo Goldoni, and directed by Nicholas Hytner, “One Man, Two Guvnors” started on London’s South Bank in 2011, moved quickly to the West End and then to Broadway in 2012, where Corden snagged a Tony that
WYspring. And a whopping stateside career.
Usually translated as “The Servant of Two Masters,” this Commedia del Arte farce from 1746 is all about a savvy valet who figures out how to keep two jobs going at once, just as long as his one boss doesn’t discover the existence of the other. Bean jettisoned all the period trappings, rewrote the gags and moved everything to the British coastal town of Brighton in 1963. It’s the perfect era for this kind of comedy, just when 1950s conservatism was giving way to swinging London and the sexual revolution. In Bean’s imaginings, Brighton is a mix of clots and coppers, twits and twerps, homies and honeys.
Hytner’s rip-roaring production nods not just at Commedia but British pantomime and American vaudeville, with Corden a presence both retro and contemporary. You can see all the skills that would make him famous on vivid display here.
He’s an astounding detailed and dexterous physical comedian, and a performer who understands that the stakes must be extraordinarily high for the laughs to flow. That unwavering commitment to the far reaches of physical shtick is what makes him so funny, as does his extraordinary emotional investment in the entire enterprise. People wrongly think of farce as a controlled, precise art form, mostly bereft of the heart. Cordon’s the neediest, most lovable rouge imaginable and that, married to his palpable humility, is what makes the show work.
What you’re watching here is a filmed live performance. It’s a multi-camera shoot, and close to movie quality, but the presence of the audience, many of whom get dragged up on stage, is a crucial part of why this show is worth watching at home. (Apparently, on one memorable night, Corden pulled one Donald J. Trump out of the audience; alas, or maybe thankfully, the cameras were not there). What you see here is Corden’s affection for the public, his rare ability not only to make up patter on the spot, but his insistence on doing so in such a way as to make the poor sap on stage look good. Hytner gave him total freedom to add lines, break character, do his thing.
He does his thing all right, and he has the support of a game British cast that includes the brilliant Oliver Chris and Tom Edden, with the latter playing an ancient hotel waiter with tremors. At one point in his performance, a nod to Andrew Sachs’ famous character in “Fawlty Towers,” Edden’s fragile server gets smacked in the head and knocked down a set of stairs.
That might well be how you are feeling right now, but the important thing here is that Edden’s guy pops right back up so Corden can inflict more punishment.