Force Play: A Farce Farce
A quick-witted pastiche of farce and screwball comedies, Force Play: A Farce Farce, is the Hampshire College debut of playwrights Mike Lion and Ethan Wilcox. Fast-paced and funny, this play tells the story of a semi-secret police station located in the middle of a public park. Beginning with the kidnapping of three local children, the police must solve the crime, all while dealing with their own personal interests affected by the case. As the show goes on, relationships are revealed, mistakes are made, and fortunes are made and lost.
As an exaggerated take on the farce play, Force Play works quite well. The works it imitates rely on easily confused characters and unlikely coincidences to further the plot, and unexpected twists should be expected often. However, the fast pace and absurd nature of this farce can sometimes be overwhelming. While Lion and Wilcox are good writers, it seems that they threw in every joke they had come up with, even if it didn’t fit well within the scene. It's a testament to the multitude of jokes that I can't provide an example here, since stopping to write one down would have resulted in me missing two more. And while farces are not meant to be perfectly coherent, Force Play sometimes piles on the plot twists too quickly for the audience to stay abreast. However, it is important to note that Wilcox and Lion are aware of the script’s imperfect nature, and even after this production is finished, they intend to keep rewriting it. To that end, each program contains a short questionnaire in which the audience can leave feedback and suggestions. Although not every audience member will fill it out, it is an ingenious way for the playwrights to understand what worked and what didn’t.
-B.L.