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The Senior Play The problems facing the cast of the senior play, Brandon Thomas's, CHARLEY'S AUNT, were those involving techniques of playing farce. At first glance, one would think that farce should present no particular difficulties, since the plays most often done by smaller high schools are farces. CHARLEY'S AUNT, however, offered several challenges that the common, hack-written high school farce does not. Lord Fan court Babberley Charles Wykeham Amy Spettigue Brassett The first challenge lay in the fact that the play is obviously British. The play is set at Oxford, and three of the leading characters are undergraduates at that university. Though British accents were mercifully eschewed, an attempt was made to re- tain the British flavor, and only a few lines were Americanized. The Oxford undergraduate of 1892 had, of course, many things in common with the American university undergraduate of today; however, partly because they were British and partly because it was 1892, the differences loom large. Education was still largely restricted to the well-to-do, and the young men of the play (one a Lord) would obviously be rather more cultured--or conscious of culture--than their modern American counterparts. They would be, in all likelihood, rather more conscious of dress, in large part because the society in which they lived had far more string- ent standards of dress and behavior than exist today. Consequently, it was decided to play Jack, Charley, and Lord Fancourt Babberley (Danny Montgomery, Del Strahm, and Don Cleavinger) as slightly af- fected, since the British undergraduate of 1892 would doubtless appear somewhat prissy and affected should he appear today. The time of the action and the time the play was written also presented some challenges. Some theatrical devices common to that period of play- writing--such as the aside and the convenient, if unmotivated, crosses of one actor away from another for the sole purpose of allowing private conversations--seem strange to a modern audience. There was no real effort made to modernize the play, though some modernization would have doubtless improved the playability to a modern audience. It was felt, however, that modernization of such a classic of the theatre, for whatever rea- son, would prove to be more corruption than enhancement. Therefore, the asides were left unmolested, as were the purposeful--and un- realistic--crosses. Because farce is, by its very nature, not realistic theatre, the actors, thoroughly acclimated to realism through exposure to television and the movies, had to change their thinking somewhat. The stilted, occasionally flored lines required great liveliness and precise diction--radical de- partures from the cast's tendency toward a monotone mumble. In order to establish a difference between Jack and Charley--whose characters really show little dif- ference in the script--it was decided to have Danny Montgomery, as Jack, show a rather quick, but harmless, temper, and to have Del Strahm, as Charley, show dependence on--and deference to-- Jack. Lord Fancourt Babberley needed to appear more masculine than Jack or Charley in order to heighten the effect of his appearing later in a dress if Jack Chesney Kitty Verdun Stephen Spettigue 25 Ela Delahay Donna Lucia
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