Remembering the Comedy of Ernie Kovacs

Why is Ernie Kovac’s Nairobi Trio funny?  The question was posed during an NPR segment devoted to the release of a new DVD box set of Kovac’s innovative television show. The woman being interviewed had been the piano player during the sketch.  When she just replied, “It’s just funny” to the question, I started to wonder what indeed makes this bit humorous.

I remember watching the program when I was a child and recall the truly absurd visual images Ernie created. Just as memorable as the trio, is the repeated sequence of a woman in a bathtub who sees various objects and persons rising out of the bubbles in front of her.  Having a periscope appear was both amusing and slightly sexual which I suppose is the perfect trigger for a laugh. 

The whole idea of farces, which people like Georges Feydeau perfected in his classic A Flea in Her Ear, usually portray comic characters who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. That might mean that a scantily clad woman could be found in an unfortunate position with a jealous husband in pursuit.  If you imagine someone climbing out of a women’s bath, I think you see the comic possibilities.

Kovac, like the playwright Eugene Ionesco, comes from a European sensibility that fashioned a response to the horror of World War II by finding humor in the absurdity of life that could produce such misery.

Now of course seeing people in ape masks and trench coats miming to a piece of music like wind up monkeys is funny.  But there is a slightly sinister aspect to the whole skit.  First you have the sight gag of one orangutan pounding the conductor to the beat of the song.  Then the appearance of a half primate half human is also jarring. Finally there is the added tension that the beating will just continue as long as the music plays. The conductor wises up catching the drumstick-wielding chimp in the act but is then distracted by the piano player and still gets pummeled.

This all reminds me of the farmer who had a string of bad luck.  First of all his farmland was flooded.  Then there was that summer when the locust arrived.  Finally when the place was devastated by a tornado he threw his hands up to God.  “God, what have I done?” exclaimed the man.  “Nothing,” said God.  “There’s just something about you I don’t like!”