Comedy could be either slapstick ( usually referred to as " burlesque farce "), or alternatively " polite comedy ", which later came to be referred to as " domestic comedy " or " sophisticated comedy ".

Like farce, screwball comedies often involve mistaken identities or other circumstances in which a character or characters try to keep some important fact a secret.

Both of these books are composed of individual short stories ( which range from farce or humorous anecdotes to well-crafted literary fictions ) set within a larger narrative story ( a frame story ), although the frame-tale device was not adopted by all writers.

Slapstick is a type of broad, physical comedy involving exaggerated, boisterous actions ( e. g. a pie in the face ), farce, violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.

In 1961, Richard Ingrams directed a production of Spike Milligan ’ s surreal post-nuclear apocalypse farce The Bed-Sitting Room, in which Rushton was hailed by Kenneth Tynan as “ brilliant ”.

) Also in 1967 Sykes and his old comrade Jimmy Edwards started touring with the theatrical farce Big Bad Mouse which, while keeping more or less to a script, gave them rein to ad lib and address the audience.

Lubitsch went independent to direct That Uncertain Feeling ( 1941, a remake of his 1925 film Kiss Me Again ), and the dark anti-Nazi farce To Be or Not to Be ( 1942 ), which was Jack Benny's only major screen success and Carole Lombard's last picture.

In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humor of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases, culminating in an ending which often involves an elaborate chase scene.

The Viennese playwright Arthur Schnitzler took bedroom farce to its highest dramatic level in his La Ronde, which in ten bedroom scenes connects the highest and lowest of Vienna.

Hwang decided to turn the experience into a semi-autobiographical play which pits him as the main character in a media farce about mistaken racial identity, which was ( oddly enough ) one of the main plots of Face Value.

This was followed by a satirical farce called The Toyshop ( Covent Garden, 1735 ), in which the toymaker indulges in moral observations on his wares, a hint which was probably taken from Thomas Randolph's Conceited Pedlar.

Subtitled Der Film zum Buch vom Führer (" The film accompanying the Führer's book "), the movie is a grotesque farce about the events when, in 1983, German Stern magazine began to publish, with great fanfare, the 60 volumes of the alleged diaries of Adolf Hitler – which two weeks later turned out to be entirely fake.

Her first play to receive wide notice was Cloud Nine ( 1979 ), " a farce about sexual politics ", set partly in a British colony in the Victorian era, which examines the relationships involved in colonisation, and utilizes cross-gender casting for comic and instructive effect.

Heywood's best known plays are his domestic tragedies and comedies ( plays set among the English middle classes ); his masterpiece is generally considered to be A Woman Killed with Kindness ( acted 1603 ; printed 1607 ), a domestic tragedy about an adulterous wife, and a widely admired Plautine farce The English Traveller ( acted approximately 1627 ; printed 15 July 1633 ), which is also known for its informative " Preface ", giving Heywood an opportunity to inform the reader about his prolific creative output.

In theater, Marcel Aymé found success with his plays Lucienne et le boucher, Clérambard ( 1949 ), a farce, and Tête des autres ( 1952 ), which criticized the death penalty.

Paul Arnold translated Andreae's usage as farce, but this conception has been contested by Frances Yates ( Yate 1999 ), who suggests that Andreae's use of the term implies more nearly some sort of " Divine Comedy ", a dramatic allegory played in the political domain during the tumult which preceded the Thirty Years ' War in Germany.

Bryce, who prided himself on plain talk, told Parliament it was " a farce to talk of trying these prisoners for the offences for which they were charged ... if they had been convicted in all probability they would not have got more than 24 hours ' imprisonment.

The Bumba Meu Boi is a popular farce which takes its form as a grand musical pantomime.

From London, Berezovsky called the trial, which sentenced him to six years in prison, ' a farce '.

These few plot devices provide the basic storyline throughout the entire series, on which are hung classic farce set-ups, physical comedy and visual gags, amusingly ridiculous fake accents, a large amount of sexual innuendo, and a fast-paced running string of broad cultural clichés.

The event featured his production of Oskar Kokoschka's farce Sphinx und Strohmann, for which he was also the stage designer, and which was turned into one of the most notorious among Dada provocations.

Lerner and Loewe's first collaboration was a musical adaptation of Barry Conners's farce The Patsy called Life of the Party for a Detroit stock company.

The old Holy Roman Empire was little more than a farce ; Napoleon simply abolished it in 1806 while forming new countries under his control.

Whale's last professional engagement was directing Pagan in the Parlour, a farce about two New England spinster sisters who are visited by a Polynesian whom their father, when shipwrecked years earlier, had married.

He was also in Jean Kerr's 1973 Broadway farce Finishing Touches, with Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Lansing, James Woods, and others.

He denied the term " farce " was derogatory, or even lacking in seriousness, and said " It is of nonsense all compact, and better nonsense, I think, our stage has not seen.

Their hallmark was physical farce and extreme slapstick.

The work met with approval, and was followed in the same year by Le pazzie di Stelladaura e di Zoroastro, a farce full of humour and eccentricity.

Mencken advised Valentino to " let the dreadful farce roll along to exhaustion ", but Valentino insisted the editorial was " infamous.

To add to the farce, the NATO Contact Group countries were desperate to avoid having to make good on their threat of force — Greece and Italy were strongly opposed to the whole idea, and there was vigorous opposition to military action in every NATO country.

Wodehouse was hailed by The Times as a " comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce " for his own ingenious wordplay.

Their first collaboration was a musical adaptation of Barry Connor's farce The Patsy, called Life of the Party, for a Detroit stock company.

The piece was very much a farce, and included such moments as Lavinia singing an aria to the tune of " Oops !... I Did It Again " by Britney Spears, after her tongue has been cut out ; Saturninus and Lucius engaged in a swordfight, but both being played by the same actor ; Chiron and Demetrius ' played ' by a gas can and a car radio respectively ; the love child being born with a black moustache.

The play within the play has been presented only after all the preliminaries have encouraged us to take it as a farce [...] the main purpose of the Induction was to set the tone for the play within the play – in particular, to present the story of Kate and her sister as none-too-serious comedy put on to divert a drunken tinker.

The earliest musical adaptation of the play was an anonymous ballad farce based on Charles Johnson's Cobbler of Preston ( 1716 ).

This ballad farce was performed by a children's company at Madame Violante's booth in Dame Street, Dublin in 1731, and featured a young Peg Woffington.

Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles ' classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's Vichy government.

There was also a higher element of traditional farce.

It was a farce about fantasy, based on the relationship between a flirtatious, petulant wife and a hen-pecked shoemaker.

The idea for the play was born in 1970, when Frayn was standing in the wings watching a performance of Chinamen, a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave.

According to the playwright, " It was funnier from behind than in front and I thought that one day I must write a farce from behind.

Raskolnikov arouses Zamyotov's suspicions by explaining how he, Raskolnikov, would have committed various crimes, although Zamyotov later apologizes, believing, much to Raskolnikov's amusement, that it was all a farce to expose how ridiculous the suspicions were.