Laugh In

LONDON'S VAUDEVILLIAN SMASH HITS BROADWAY

The British love of lunacy, corny humor, and innuendo, coupled with the more recent acquisition of celebrity infatuation, takes center stage on Broadway this month with the arrival of the vaudevillian comedy The Play What I Wrote. Based on the work of Morecambe and Wise, a 70s comedy duo akin to Abbott and Costello who all but perfected the art of doing things badly, the play has been putting audiences in the West End into a state of comic delirium for more than a year. Starring comedians Sean Foley and Hamish McColl, and directed by the seriously thespian Kenneth Branagh, The Play What I Wrote concerns a pair aspiring to stage an earnest (and atrociously bad) play. For that they need a star: over the course of its run in London, Ralph Fiennes, Sir Ian McKellen, Roger Moore, Jerry Hall, and Ewan McGregor took their turns. "It's a great time for pure foolishness and irony-free comedy," says McColl. "Audiences seem to glory in the pure silliness of it." In New York, George Clooney, Sting, and Liam Neeson are expected to offer themselves (and their reputations) up for mockery and light humiliation, but with producer Mike Nichols's address book open, who knows who will get the call? "A lot of the type of comedy in the show—the songs and dances, the visual gags, the physical gags—you don't see anymore; people literally don't know how to do it," says Foley. "The show's got a massively high gag count, and there are jokes coming at you from every angle. By the end—or so I've heard—people are completely elated. It's just a good-time show."

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