Amy Freed says comedy isn't hard -- it's really hard

The script of Amy Freed's new play calls for, as she puts it, "leopards, sea battles, gladiatorial contests and the burning of Rome." Naturally, it's a comedy.

In fact, "You, Nero," opening this week at South Coast Repertory, finds the Pulitzer-finalist Freed once again journeying back in time to make hay. You may recall her 2001 "The Beard of Avon," commissioned by SCR: a farcical imagining of how Shakespeare's plays were actually dreamed up. This time she takes on the fiddling Roman ruler, who commissions a play about himself.

But as Freed writes in this week's Arts & Books section, nailing the laughs in her latest effort was no picnic. When things misfired, she says, sometimes it was the actors' fault, sometimes it was the director's and, quite frequently, it was hers. Getting all the elements in a comedy to click is "practically science."

Freed also confides that the solution to a failed joke is occasionally risibly simple, as when it involves merely making sure the audience can see both eyes of an actor with a funny line. "For some reason, it's hard to land a laugh in profile."

Who knew?

-- Craig Fisher

Photo credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times