2. Red Carnations

Book: Red Carnations: Comedy in One Act
Author: Glenn Hughes
Number of pages: 12
What I’m watching: TV: Once Upon a Time, Pinky and the Brain Movies: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
What I’m playing: Uncharted 2, Uncharted 3, Skyrim, Bioshock: Infinite, The Walking Dead: Episode 1

 

            Red Carnations is a short stand-alone scene about two guys who show up at the same place to meet a girl. The humor comes from both of them being in the exact same situation: they each met a masked woman at a costume ball who promised to meet him in the park and would recognize him by a red carnation in his lapel.

 And when one woman finally shows up, the two men have such identical traits that she cannot distinguish which one she promised. It seems she mistakenly promised to meet both men, so she must decide who to go with, frustrating the younger man to the point of leaving. The young man then learns that it was all a ruse: the other man is the girl’s father who was playing the trick to act as a chaperone as the two met in the park.

            Red Carnations is mediocre. Maybe if this scene were staged, a director and actors and everyone else could add humor to it, but I don’t find the script itself all that funny. I don’t have much to say because it was so short and boring. At first, I had an inkling that the scene would involve time traveling. An older man meets a younger man in the park before an encounter with a woman. They both dress similar, and the older man seems talks familiarly with the younger man. At first, I thought the older man was an older version of the other guy. Sadly, Red Carnations is a lackluster 1925 comedy that draws one joke out for ten minutes.

Verdict (Is the book staying or going?): Going.

Bibliography

Hughes, Glenn. Red Carnations: Comedy in One Act. New York: Samuel French, Inc, 1925. Print.