“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.”
That deathbed aphorism, attributed to Edmund Gwenn, who played Santa Claus in “Miracle on 34th Street,” contains a hard nugget of truth. Cracking jokes with grandkids on the front porch is one thing, but drawing laughter from an audience by means of a play or a story can be dicey. Comedy is like that rubber reflex hammer physicians use to make your knee bounce. If that knee doesn’t bounce, a writer’s attempt at humor is DOA.
