assignment sounded like a farce. Explain why the elevated Bermuda Festival, with its emphasis on the classic arts, would include in its 1993 entertainments so low-brow a diversion as a British farce. After all, a modern British farce is a stage play in which men drop their trousers just as the vicar arrives, risque jokes are told about knickers and bodily functions, and husbands and wives chase each other in and out of suburban bedrooms. Double entendre is hardly a feast fit for refined Bermudian tastes.

Not so, argues leading British farceur Derek Nimmo at his plush townhouse in the heart of London's fashionable Chelsea. "Farce may be regarded as the low end of the acting trade,'' he says, "but it is in fact the very hardest drama to perform. None of our great tragedians, not even a Kenneth Branagh, could begin to handle it.'' Begin to handle it? RG has sought out the views of Derek Nimmo in front of a blazing log fire on a miserable London Monday because he is the producer of the two-hour farce Run For Your Wife, and almost single-handedly responsible for bringing it from the West End stage to the Bermuda Festival. "Such an extraordinary place to visit, Bermuda,'' he says in an aside. "One is always so spoiled and pampered. It's quite a contrast to some of the other places we go.'' "We'' in this context is the British Airways-sponsored Playhouse which has been Nimmo's keenest interest since its first performances in the Gulf, in 1979, for Queen Elizabeth II. "The idea is to bring the best of British plays and players to every corner of the world,'' he smiles, reeling off a list of the countries in which he has mounted productions.

Mounted productions? "Muscat, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Bahrain, Jakarta, New Guinea, Bangkok.

As far east as Guam, and as far west as, well, Bermuda, actually.'' Bangkok? Details of the four sold-out performances of the play at City Hall in the third week of January emerge. Terry Scott, an actor familiar to those who watch British television comedies, leads the eight cast members of Run For Your Wife. Helen Gill, who created one of the lead female roles in the show's opening performance in 1982, will also be on board. The other actors are equally seasoned. The play finished at the Duchess Theatre early last year after a ten-year run, unheard of for a farce.

Written by Ray Cooney, who has spent a lifetime acting, writing and producing farce, Wife is the story of a taxi driver, John Smith, to be played by Scott, who has a wife in one London suburb, and a second wife in another part of town - and a knife-edge schedule. Circumstances lead Smith to be admitted to hospital, and the unwanted attentions of two well-meaning policemen threaten to unravel his secret life. Finally, a "very gay'' neighbour helps Smith realise that he must confess, which he does, with hilarious consequences.

A very gay neighbour? Nimmo has spent four distinguished decades in the public arena.

He is the ultimate show-business hyphenate: actor-producer-television star-broadcaster-author. "Working with the Playhouse has been the most fun, though,'' he admits, "because it offers the chance to travel to places one never though one would see.'' He is especially pleased to have persuaded Terry Scott to lead the shenanigans. Scott may be best known to Bermuda audiences through his appearances in half a dozen Carry On films, which have for 30 years appealed to the same audience who so frequently attend West End farces.

"I suppose the British - and the French - are so drawn to farce,'' Nimmo says, "because of its long tradition, and its standard elements of danger, the potential loss of the central character's career, or marriage, or what have you.'' Long tradition? Indeed, farce was among the earliest known dramatic forms. The ancient Greeks regularly enjoyed theatrical revels. Aristophanes wrote 11 complete works of farce which have come down through the ages, revealing a sense of humour every bit as broad as that of Benny Hill or Brian Rix, perhaps the quintessential names in British farce. In Rome, in the 3rd century B.C., Gnaeus Navius wrote comedies of common life called Fabula Tagata. No banquet was complete without its comoedus, a slave who readextracts from broadly humorous material for the delight of those busy feasting. It is from this word that we derive the term `comedian.' Stand-up comedian? Comoedus erectus, you mean! In the Middle Ages, farce became a world-wide phenomenon. Japanese kabuki contains elements of it, and in India prahasana theatre is described as "farcical to the point of mere crudity.'' Persian taqlid, from the 10th century onwards, has recurring moments of farce. But it was in the 16th Century that modern farce had its origins. An enormously successful play, "Gammer Gurton's Needle'', its authorship even now in dispute, marked the appearance of respectable farce on the British stage. By the early 17th century, the light touch of Italian and French comedy had proved unsustainable to the coarser British taste, and renewed interest in the works of Dryden and Garrick gave birth to the heavily-ritualised form of comedy that we know today.

Gave birth? In the 19th Century, Congreve and Pinero added to the canon, and starting in 1910, an uproarious farce entitled A Little Bit Of Fluff ran for 1,241 performances until the First World War broke out. Farce continues to lean on innuendo and dramatic irony, in which the audience is in cahoots with one of the characters, knowing some key fact which another character does not, giving rise to pointed misunderstandings.

Giving rise? There is no simple answer to the continuing popularity of farce. In ancient Greece, a performance would be the occasion for drunken revelries and orgies, often for several days on end. Such behaviour seems unlikely to occur at City Hall. Modern farce retains remnants of that institutionalised freedom in its smutty humour.

And when times are hard, like now, there is nothing quite as uplifting or diverting as an evening of ribald comedy, allowing the theatre-goer the opportunity to forget his woes for a brief interlude.

In contrast, then, to its reputation, farce is a revered dramatic form, its split-second timing requiring the utmost concentration from consummate actors.

It deals with all-too-human universal foibles and shortcomings, and drives home its serious message in the disguise of ingenuous good humour. It is a high form of feel-good entertainment for sophisticated audiences.

But now you must excuse me. My trousers have just fallen to my ankles, and I'm expecting the Ladies Church Guild at any moment. To make matters worse, the next-door-neighbour's wife is hiding in the bathroom.

Terry Scott and Helen Gill thicken the plot during the West End run of Run For Your Wife.

RG MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 1993