Laurel & Hardy Sleep Together
Urbis Orbis
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And with the passing of the comedy teams goes a lot of secret knowledge about how two-person acts work, specifically the subtleties of status. Every successful comedy team has a high-status character and a low-status character, a bully and a victim, an Oliver Hardy and a Stan Laurel. Much of a team’s comedy comes from the myriad ways the two torture, tease, and infuriate each other. The routines can be painfully trite– Hardy hands Laurel a hammer, holds a nail in place, and says, “When I nod my head, you hit it”–but if the chemistry is right and the relationship has been carefully established, when Hardy nods and Laurel crowns him it’s funny.
This approach makes Dodd’s story–a lot of bickering and tossing and turning, almost the whole 55 minutes the two are onstage–feel very long indeed. And it makes Dodd’s message seem annoyingly simple: homophobia is silly. Too bad–his play could have been as rich and complex as human sexuality.
The funniest thing about this show is the set–a nativity scene in which the usual wise men, shepherds, and so on adoring the Baby Jesus are joined by a giraffe and a chimpanzee. That sad fact helps explain why, soon after the play started, I found myself actually yearning for the end of the world–or at least the end of this show.
