Radio
Comedy culture
Michael Vestey
Writing recently in this column about the range and subtlety of British comedy and wondering why this country is so suc- cessful, I thought it difficult to imagine a German Willie Rushton. Until I heard Double Vision on Radio Four (Saturday) I hadn't realised it was Rushton who made the joke: 'What would we be if we didn't have a sense of humour? German.'
Tim Brooke-Taylor, Miles Kington and Edward Enfield were discussing comedy on this engaging programme of gentle satire recorded at the Bath Theatre Royal, a tem- porary replacement for Loose Ends which has been having a break. It was Kington, I think, who told the story about the German television producer asking Les Dawson what sort of sketches he did. Dawson sup- plied one example, in which he was a street cleaner who had swept up a pile of rubbish, looked around, lifted the pavement and brushed it underneath. The producer said, `We can't do that. In Germany, pavements don't lift up.'
It's not that Germans don't have a sense of humour, they do, but it lacks subtlety; on the whole they prefer the slapstick of Benny Hill to, say, the surreal bite of Peter Cook, despite their pre-war brilliance at cabaret wit. National characteristics aside, the horrors of war, of course, swept much of that away; it was no laughing matter and the dearth of decent German comedy since Police! Drop the pen!' then must be partly attributed to that. If, as Professor Norman Stone remarked on a radio programme last year, Germany has been through two periods of national psy- chosis this century, it's hardly surprising that humour, such a vital part of civilisa- tion, has suffered. Yet, the British not only kept comedy going through the war but renewed it with vigour in the drab post-war years, and nowhere more so than on the radio.
Earlier this month, Night Waves, Radio Three's nightly arts programme, made heroic efforts to counter the view that Ger- many is devoid of humour, and it became apparent that satire there is reviving, though whether or not it appeals to us is another matter. Two critics reviewed a pro- duction of Stunde MA Hour Zero, a Ger- man play billed as musical satire, set in a training school for politicians, and playing at the London International Festival of Theatre. It lasted two and a half hours without an interval and apparently without a translation, and so it wasn't surprising that some of the audience began leaving before the end.
But one of the critics thoroughly enjoyed it, reporting that the audience found the play extremely funny. No doubt they did but I wonder if a certain amount of good- will wasn't involved here, with some think- ing, now look, this is a German play and it's vitally important that we laugh. I sensed something of the sort when I saw a Spanish troupe miming, for what seemed like an eternity, a spoof on bullfighting, at the otherwise excellent Chichester Festival Theatre. It was hell for me but all around people were rocking in their seats and dab- bing their cheeks, especially the man next to me whom, in my frustration, I felt a strong urge to strangle. As it took place in the smaller, more intimate Minerva The- atre I couldn't make a run for it without disturbing the performance. I felt the audi- ence wanted it to be funny because it was Spanish and not to laugh might be politically incorrect in a xenophobic way. Or perhaps they liked mime and I didn't.
In Night Waves, the most interesting con- tribution came from Alistair Beaton, a comedy writer I'm not particularly keen on, especially when he hits the wrong note with his send-ups of the party conferences on The World Tonight on Radio Four. Beaton has been in Germany working on drama there and he discovered an inferior- ity complex about comedy; they believe the British can do it and they can't, that we possess what he called a genetic splendour in this genre. Attempts to mount sophisti- cated comedy in Germany were often blocked by intellectuals who made the decisions in the arts; they thought comedy was an inferior art form.
But he also thought, and I agree with him, that the German language does not lend itself to comic subtlety; it's very pre- cise and doesn't function well, he said, for double meanings, triple meanings, irony and layers of meaning. It's difficult to be terse. He believed there's an irony in English culture that will never fully operate in German culture. Talking of Stunde Null another critic thought it over-researched and rehearsed and lacking spontaneity. And I suppose that it is the German approach to much else besides, thorough and leaving little to chance.
They might get to the towels first but they can't see the joke.
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