In “Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious’ Sigmund Freud comments on the use of wordplay and the importance of ‘brevity’ within comedy.
The 2024 Royal variety performance ‘The Comedy about spies’ exhibits many of Freud’s thoughts on successful comedy. The Mischief theatre sketch follows a group of spies who all have different agent names, each involving letters of the alphabet. Head spy Agent X is trying to discuss important business with Agent Y. However he is struggling to get his words across as everything he is saying is being miss understood by the other agents due to the groups’ nomenclature.
Many of the jokes within the sketch are successful though brevity. The whole sketch itself uses one concept, the confusion caused by the codenames, as the root of all hilarity. One joke that quicky and simply ‘says what it has to say’ is agent O walking in every time a character says ‘oh.’ The one word joke is snappy and only becomes even more funny every time it appears, with the characters repeating the mistake. Another joke that uses wordplay and is ‘nonsensical’ appears when Agent X shows Agent Y some evidence slides. The audience assume he will show criminal evidence on the slides but in fact he shows photos of slides. The joke comes from the nonsense of the situation and Agent X’s literal use of the word. Agent Y completes the section with a quick comment of observational comedy as she comments ‘That’s twisted’ in disgust to a photo of a helter-skelter. The brief joke uses the double meaning of ‘twisted’ as the slide is actually twisting but also she believes the photo to be morally twisted.
Freud argues that word play can be critical part of making an audience laugh ‘there can be no doubt that it is precisely on this verbal structure that the joke’s character as a joke and its power to case a laugh depend.’ Towards the end of the sketch, cameos by the events’ host are introduced by word play and the hilarity that can arrive from miss hearing. A play on presenter Amanda Holden’s name is made when one of the agents faint and Amanda rushes in after Agent X shout. Agent X expresses that he didn’t call out for Amanda Holden but instead wanted “a man to hold him.” Agent X then cries out for “a car” to take the agent to hospital however in runs Alan Carr instead of a car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr19-ENMVRo
Mischief Theatre, The Comedy About Spies – Royal Variety Performance, 2024.
Sigmund Freud, “Introduction,” Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (New York: Norton, 1960), 5-13.