A Conversation with Cooney ‘To be in a theatre full of people laughing at what you have taken great pains to create is a fantastic feeling.’ WITH A CAREER in the theatre spanning more than 65 years, Ray Cooney is Britain’s world-class farceur. Who else has spent a lifetime finding ever-ingenious ways to celebrate the farcical foibles of human nature. By my reckoning, he has written, directed, produced and appeared in more stage farces than anyone currently living on the planet. Starting out as a boy actor in 1946, he served an acting apprenticeship playing with various repertory companies before joining the Brian Rix company of farceurs at the Whitehall Theatre in 1956, where he appeared in Dry Rot and Simple Spymen. It was during this period that his talent for creating laughter first emerged. As a fan of farce, over the decades I have seen almost all of Ray Cooney’s West End productions, and many of those revived in provincial repertory theatres or on tour, from the insanely inventive One for the Pot (co-written with Tony Hilton) and the sexually provocative Not Now Darling, to There Goes the Bride, Move Over Mrs Markham (written with John Chapman), Chase Me, Comrade!, Wife Begins at Forty, Why Not Stay for Breakfast?, Run For Your Wife, Two into One, Out of Order, It Runs in the Family, Funny Money, Caught in the Net and its sequel, Tom, Dick and Harry.
What do You think about May The Farce Be With You?
