Customer Reviews

Farce: A history from Aristophanes to Woody Allen

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
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Quite simply, this is one of the most wonderful books I have ever read. The author is as wise as Eric Bentley and unpretentious as Moliere. I first got this book when I was seventeen years old, and it changed the way I looked at comedy - it introduced me to Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, and Woody Allen. It encouraged me to consider comedy as a profession for myself and I am forever in its debt. It is still a book that I return to and keep finding new things in; I learn more from it as my own experience grows. I think that this is one of those books that nearly anyone could get something out of. I strongly encourage at least taking a look at it. It is very hard to put down again. I do not give my five-star rating very often but this book easily deserves it.

It is not easy to draw a line through a few thousand years of drama and find similarities, but Bermel manages to do so in a way that should satisfy and surprise both general readers and the more academically inclined. Rather than look on the dramatic heritage of a few thousand years, collecting a body of works into a category called 'farce' and then explaining that body of work away, Bermel instead finds farce as a mode of expression, finding it in (hitherto) unlikely places. I found his writing on Joe Orton a wonderful introduction to that playwright's work; but his finding of farcical modes in places such as Beckett's work and the absurdists gives the reader good food for thought, and good things to think with for the next time they go to the theatre, or even rent out a video.