Guest Blog: Dominic Hedges On Marx Brothers Comedy THE DOPPEL GANG

"I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. I'll give you that, sunshine..."

Comedy scares me. The more something makes me laugh, the deeper that sinking feeling goes - after the mirth, terrified at the idea that my stuff won't hold a candle. I have such admiration for people who write comedy well. If I see something that makes me laugh, I will inevitably think my work will never be that funny. If I see something I think is crap, I will of course relegate my work mind accordingly.

So when Just Some Theatre Company approached me to write a comedy, about the Marx Brothers no less, my answer was an emphatic, if trembling, "No, thank you". However, like a good little theatre-maker, those words never actually passed my lips.

I was nervous, but it was about time. I'd been winding my friends up for years; setting lengthy traps in conversation that served my punch lines, laughing at my own jokes until respiration failed, then calming and explaining clearly why what I said was funny and why they should be laughing too.

I'm sure they are revelling in this. It's very much my money where my mouth is.

We canned playing the Brothers actually early on. Loads of drafts were knocked about verging on biography, but nothing really worked. The true life stories of the Marx Brothers are so complex and interesting that honouring it meant a process we weren't really looking for. Instead I turned my attention away from their lives and their films and instead focussed on their influence on others.

That's when it really came alive as an idea. Being free to just indulge in their genius was amazing. At first it resulted in rehashed jokes I'd heard or misremembered ideas I'd bodged. But I was getting there. This process went on for a while until there needed to be a blanket ban on watching their work and writing sketches. That's when the setting, characters, and main conceit found itself.

So, The Doppel Gang: four conscription-dodging, debt-owing spivs dare to save their failing theatre by conning London and masquerading as the Marx Brothers as the Blitz tear the skies apart.

Setting the whole thing in a crumbling, old theatre was my favourite idea. Naturally, there are metaphors à go-go here (many trite), but thinking of the traditional theatre building itself as a setting for misdirection and miscommunication, hallmarks of comedy, was a new one on me. The box office, lobby, onstage, offstage, backstage, green room, rafters, each space is a front for another, and that's the parallel I wanted to draw to the words.

Then the threat that at any moment the whole thing could be razed spoke a lot to me about the wavering sanity and sudden frenzy found in comedy, particularly British (Cleese, Mayall etc.). I knew the playing space wouldn't be huge, so I wanted every axis of it used. That's where our fantastic director Terence Mann works wonders, deftly zoning these varying proximities of earshot ingeniously. This is a visual treat too.

A show like this always runs the risk of being seen as a rip-off, which is why I knew from the start the story had to stand up on its own as a piece of writing lest it become just a vehicle for the actors to imitate their heroes. This is not a Marx Brothers tribute show.

In the end it became a comedy about comedy, a world to pit us up against our American cousins. Truth in jest is something we both have in common. We each think we're funnier than one another and what better place to frame that idea than the final years of WWII, where the Americanisation of British culture accelerated.

Comedy still scares me, more so now I have one playing. Audiences have been very receptive and seem to be enjoying it, but we wouldn't be artists if we were content, yeah? Eric Morecambe's immortalised quip has seen me good through tricky writing processes. Learn the notes, learn them well, but then play, sod the order. Remaking melodies somebody else already mastered will never satisfy.

The Doppel Gang at Tristan Bates Theatre 17 January-11 February, 2017

To post a comment, you must register and login.