While One Man, Two Guvnors seems to take place in the fairly distant past, the genesis of this comedy actually dates back much further. Richard Bean based the script on the Italian Il servitore di due padroni (The Servant of Two Masters) which premiered in 1753. Although his adaptation and its distinctive brand of humour may appear to be as quintessentially British as Beefeaters and the Beatles, Bean’s source was the Venetian play, written by Carlo Goldoni in the commedia dell’arte style, which itself took shape in the 16th century as part of the later phase of the Italian Renaissance.
Francis Henhall (Andrew McNee), the loveable clown. Photo by David Cooper
Actors and actresses performing works in the commedia style wore masks and mainly improvised. Their improvisations were generally structured around short, loose comic scenarios. The characters they played were broad caricatures of social types, with the masks serving to accentuate the more ridiculous characteristics of a given type. These archtypes include Arlecchino, the loveable clown, Pantalone, the greedy half-wit, Il Capitano, the upper-class twit, Il Dottore, the know-it-all, Columbina, the intelligent yet humble love interest to Arlecchino, and the inamorati or ‘the lovers’, hopeless romantics to a fault.
The hopeless romantics: Dolly (Cailin Stadnyk) and Francis (Andrew McNee). Photo by David Cooper
While most of the plot and characters from the source play are preserved in the update, Bean acknowledges that he simply omitted some of the commedia characters and traditions that didn’t fit his vision for the new play. However, the gently critical, yet still ultimately affectionate, tone of Goldoni remains intact in Bean’s adaptation. Regarding his bumbling protagonist, Francis Henshall, Bean commented: “The idea is to present to the audience a lovable idiot…He is partly a stupid version of our own selves…we like him, we want his scams to work, we’re on his side. He’s innocent and yet up against the world and he’s only got us to help.” It is quite easy to imagine Goldoni, in his time, similarly describing Truffaldino, Francis’s Venetian antecedent based on commedia’s Arlecchino.
The cast of One Man, Two Guvnors. Photo by David Cooper
Learn more about the commedia dell’arte archetypes portrayed in One Man, Two Guvnors and about yourself by taking our quiz. Share the results with your friends on social media to see how they compare!
Content based on the One Man, Two Guvnors Teacher Resource Guide by Josh Timmerman.
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