Imagine you are an audience member in Dwight’s production of Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors. Francis Henshall, played by Oliver Wyatt ’26, asks you to join him on stage. Suddenly, without warning, you are part of the show. Breaking the fourth wall is just one of the ways the play pulls from theatrical tradition, as One Man, Two Guvnors takes Commedia dell’Arte (an early form of Italian theater) to a whole new level. 

Inspired by Carlo Goldini’s Commedia dell’Arte play The Servant of Two Masters (written in 1746 and performed at Dwight in 2009), Bean’s version sets the scene in 1963 with the characters in Brighton, England, caught in quite the predicament. Francis bears the misfortune of becoming employed by two masters — Rachel Crabbe, played by Lexi Swartz ’27 (who is disguised as her deceased brother Roscoe), and Stanley Tubbers, played by Dwight Global Online student Finn Drozjock ’26 (Rachel’s boyfriend who killed Roscoe). The plot thickens as Pauline Clench, played by Lily Beal ’27, is meant to marry Roscoe, but is in love with Alan Dangle, played by Vivien Jan ’28. Francis does everything in his power to keep Roscoe/Rachel and Stanley away from each other, running back and forth between two doors so that he can afford a trip with his love interest Dolly, played by Maria Basilio ’27.    

Director/Designer Terrence Christgau and Assistant Director/Costume Designer Colleen Durham presented the students with a complex plot that made the audience laugh, keeping them fully engaged and at the edge of their seats. Mr. Christgau knew from the moment he chose this production that it would be “asking a lot of the students.” 

And they certainly delivered! But all the hard work was rewarding, especially for Finn, as this production was his first-ever. He said, “I really enjoyed it… It taught me so much about who I am as a person and the way to approach certain things… It taught me a lot more than just how to act on stage. It taught me a lot of critical thinking skills.” 

Mastering the complicated plot is only a fraction of the hard work involved in making this production a masterpiece — in true Commedia dell’Arte tradition, an archetype (a stock character) has to come to life vividly within each character. Mr. Christgau explained, “The characters adhere rather surprisingly to the traits of the classical stock characters: Arlecchino (Francis), Columbina (Dolly), Pantalone (Charlene), Dottore (Harry), Brighella (Lorriane), and the classic lovers (Pauline, Alan, Roscoe/Rachel, and Stanley). And so too does the writing, when it embraces the physical comedy.”

Both Lexi Swartz ’27 and Finn Drozjock ’26 recall an exercise led by Ms. Durham in which she asked the students to act like the animal that represents their stock character, adding to the physicality of the play. Since they were assigned “the lovers,” it was slightly difficult for them to find independent personas at first. But Lexi, who embodied two characters, ended up finding two animals to work with as a result of the exercise, saying, “During this experimentation, I found Roscoe to be a fox and Rachel a dove; I then thought it was very enjoyable to apply those animal traits to Roscoe/Rachel especially because the traits are very dissimilar.” 

For Oliver, this method was instrumental, as he spends almost every second on stage, entertaining the audience as Francis. He had a stock character who is traditionally either a chicken or a monkey, and Oliver chose to weave in the motions of a chicken, fueling his performance. He said, “Commedia asides are very precise. It's as follows: the character… snaps its head to the audience, says what it’s thinking, then snaps its head back to its scene partner. Francis had a lot of asides as he is the narrator of the show… so I capitalized on the precision of the asides.”

Just like the Commedia training, Mr. Christgau explained that this production took a lot of shifting and inventing. He swapped genders for four roles, and thus had to make a variety of creative changes. In addition, many scenes had to be written or altogether reconstructed. For example, during the show, a cast member, who was pretending to be a random audience member, was called up by Francis. In this scene, the original production called for a fire to be comically put out, so Mr. Christgau worked with the students to come up with a fire-free comedic element: a character covered in whipped cream. “All the pre-planning, the practice rounds, samples, failures, and a great deal of invention is part of the ‘recipe,’” said Mr. Christgau. Making these alterations allowed students to understand the importance of problem-solving in theater more generally. 

Dwight’s One Man, Two Guvnors wove the past and future together, with themes of traditional Commedia dell’Arte combined with contemporary, innovative approaches. Through creative direction, the students put on a fantastic show and learned valuable lessons that extended beyond the stage.