Let’s take a look at some musical “sketches” (this post and the post on Thursday). These aren’t sketches in the commonly used sense, but they have many of the same elements.
I am told this is from “Your Show of Shows” and the performer with Sid Caesar is Nanette Fabray. This appears to be one of those “classic” sketches I’d never seen before recently.
Wow.
This is wonderfully brilliant. This kind of high concept sketch can easily be crap (when people other than Sid Caesar do it). Mime to a piece of music. While this is not an example of fine “sketchwriting” (my foucs on Sketchwright), you can see many of the same elements. First off, the music is the most recognizable piece around, and we all know it because it is so good. It follows a great structure of highs-and-lows/ebb-and-flow/conflict-and-resolution, and the actor performances brilliantly follow the brilliant music. Secondly, the camerawork is actually quite good, also switching angles up to match the music. Of course, the treasure in this piece is in the mime. The argument follows the tone of the music, and progresses to a resolution at the end. Like a good sketch should be, this narrative is familiar and yet changes and twists to keep us interested, telling a story of an argument from the beginning through the exploration of the argument and finally to the resolution. This kind of reminds me of one of my favorite Drop Six sketches, where one of the performers (I *think* Rodney Umble) lip synchs Largo al factotum (from Barber of Seville – you’d recognize it) in preparation for, and while taking a bath. As I said, it was lip synched, so it wasn’t quite the same, but it was in Italian, and so the scene followed the emotion of the singing in a familiar situation (bathing), so was otherwise very similar. Also brilliant.
This is more of a entertaining eye-widening impressive piece than a LOL piece, and there was little (sketch) writing craft involved, but it is a fine example of the type of short comedy all sketchwrights should strive towards. Three stars.