| A bedroom farce is a type of light drama, centered on the sexual pairings and
recombinations of characters as they move through improbable plots. The bedroom farce is perhaps the most common form of farce.
The most famous bedroom farceur is probably Georges Feydeau, whose
collections of coincidences, slamming doors, and ridiculous dialogue delighted Paris in the 1890s and are now considered
forerunners to the Theater of the Absurd. The Viennese playwright Arthur
Schnitzler took bedroom farce to its highest dramatic level in his La Ronde, which in ten bedroom scenes connects the
highest and lowest of Vienna.
In modern times, Woody Allen's A
Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) and the television series Fawlty Towers both present aspects of the bedroom farce. David Ives' 1982 play Noises Off parodies the typical
bedroom farce via its play-within-the-play, "Nothing On."
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