{"id":14856,"date":"2014-03-06T12:08:52","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T17:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2014\/03\/06\/14856.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T19:10:10","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T00:10:10","slug":"what-are-the-lolliest-plays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2014\/03\/06\/what-are-the-lolliest-plays\/","title":{"rendered":"What are the LOLliest Plays?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A quick question&#8212;it&#8217;s true that <cite>Noises Off<\/cite> is the funniest show ever written, but what else is in the top ten? I&#8217;m looking for plays (not musicals) that you think are the funniest. Well, not the very funniest, because that spot is taken, but up there for funninessosity. I ask because I was asked by the Director of our recent production, who I assume was looking for possible plays to produce.\n<p>Among my nominees would be&#8230; well, it&#8217;s actually difficult to think of them. I would like to see more productions of <cite>Charley&#8217;s Aunt<\/cite>, which I think really is a funny play. Would anyone buy a ticket to it? I have no idea. Same for <cite>Rookery Nook<\/cite>, which isn&#8217;t anywhere near as funny as <cite>Charley&#8217;s Aunt<\/cite>, but is still pretty good.\n<p>Among relatively recent plays, there are several of Alan Ayckbourn&#8217;s plays that are not overdone; I might pick <cite>A Small Family Business<\/cite>. Of the Charles Busch plays, <cite>Psycho Beach Party<\/cite>; of the Charles Ludlum plays, <cite>Mystery of Irma Vep<\/cite>. Of Tom Stoppard&#8217;s plays, I&#8217;m inclined to <cite>On the Razzle<\/cite> as the funniest&#8212;not the best, but the funniest. Although I do like <cite>The Real Inspector Hound<\/cite>. Is <cite>Loot<\/cite> funnier than <cite>What the Butler Saw<\/cite>? Is Terence Rattigan&#8217;s <cite>Sleeping Prince<\/cite> funny without Laurence Olivier? <cite>Blithe Spirit<\/cite> is the best of Noel Coward&#8217;s, I think, although overdone at present.\n<p>Let&#8217;s see&#8230; <cite>Educating Rita<\/cite> by Willy Russell has memorable lines and characters. <cite>Hysteria<\/cite> by Terry Johnson has lovely bits. I am very fond of Paula Vogel&#8217;s <cite>Mineola Twins<\/cite>. I would like to see a production of <cite>Incorruptible<\/cite> by Michael Hollinger; it doesn&#8217;t sustain the premise very well, but the premise is terrific. I know less about recent stuff that wasn&#8217;t written in English&#8212;I can&#8217;t stand Yasmina Reza&#8217;s stuff, but people seem to like it. I do really like Vaclav Havel&#8217;s plays; my favorite is <cite>The Memorandum<\/cite>, but <cite>The Garden Party<\/cite> is very funny as well.\n<p>Dunno&#8212;what have you-all got?\n<p><I>Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,<br>-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Which Your Humble Blogger is just blanking on that one you really like, you know, the funny one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16627,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14856\/revisions\/16627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}