A stodgy pre-World War I German society is dominated by a royal aristocracy and managed by a complacent, compliant middle-class bureaucracy. The bourgeoisie is the proud rising class, socially preening and powerful. Men-masters of the universe in their own minds-rule the country, the church, the home. They are ruled only by the king and the clock, as they tick and tock their mechanical, orderly way through life.

It is such a noble social edifice, such an impressive, magnificent testimonial to their self-regard.

And then. A rustle of skirts. A wisp of silk. A flash of tender white thigh. An imagined higher realm. It takes only the merest suggestion of erotic temptation and the entire monument to male order comes tumbling down. In the aftermath of pretty Louise's wardrobe malfunction at the King's parade, the lords of the universe are reduced to a pack of street hounds snuffling and howling after a bitch in heat.

Eros has always been the naughty boy of comedy. Time after time since theatre began to delight audiences, it is the delicate prick of his subversive arrow that topples empires and shows up stuffed shirts (or stuffed codpieces) for the hypocritical fools they are.

Hard to imagine, isn't it, that in 1911 this delicious meringue of a sexy little comedy was actually banned by the Munich censor for its ruthlessly satirical picture of middle-class morals? It's true! Knowing that does help us believe that, indeed, the citizens of this inflated bourgeois society took themselves quite as earnestly as Theo Maske takes himself. For Theo, it is worth postponing sex with his lovely young wife to delay a family until he has precisely the right amount of money in his bank account. For Theo, it is worth keeping Louise shabby and unfashionable to avoid the notice of other people. For Theo, a moment potentially embarrassing to Louise is all about what others will think of him.

Inspired by a love of Moliere, Die Hosen, the parent play of The Underpants, was the first play in an ironically titled play cycle by Carl Sternheim (1878 - 1942) called Aus dem burgerlichen Heldenleben (1911 - 1922) or From the Heroic Life of the Bourgeois. Each play savagely lampooned German middle-class society, which Sternheim believed was morally corrupt. These and his later writings-short stories, poems, other plays, a novel-caused regular consternation with the authorities and, by the 1930s, he had the splendid distinction of having all his works banned by the Nazis. Sternheim was a noted proponent of German Expressionism and one of the founders of Hyperion, the Expressionist literary journal that first published Franz Kafka. It was he who presented the Fontane Prize to Kafka when he was still an unknown. Sternheim, whose father was a Jew, died in Brussels during World War II, having escaped being deported to the camps.

And so, a century later, in an outwardly different age and society, Die Hosen becomes The Underpants and, wow! So little has changed in how human society reacts to the sweet suggestion of a little skin. The husband is still a puffed-up, selfish bourgeois buffoon enchanted with his own glory. The potential renters are still sneaky hypocrites, each one so deluded by his own desires and philosophy that he ignores the woman that drew him into the action. And the naive Louise, always accepting the will of her husband and the values around her, starts to get a whiff of her own power and begins-just begins-to think for herself. Could it be that people like this are still around?

Those of us who fondly remember the Steve Martin of the white suit, head-arrow, rabbit ears, balloon animals, banjo, and that beloved phrase, "a wild-and-crazy guy" (always with the fingers making quote marks in the air)-we need a nudge to recall that actually Martin is one of the truly brilliant Renaissance men of our time. Born in Waco, Texas in 1945, Steve Martin became a rock star of comedy during the 1960s and '70s. No stranger to the kind of political satire that characterizes Sternheim's play, Martin started out as an Emmy-award winning writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (which-remember?-also had its little problems with censorship). He's an award-winning novelist (Shopgirl, The Pleasure of My Company), filmmaker (Roxanne), actor (dozens of films), and playwright (Picasso at the Lapin Agile). A major collector of visual art and trustee of the Los Angeles Museum of Art, he has also turned himself into one of the world's best banjo players, currently touring with the bluegrass group, Steep Canyon Rangers. No art form has been left untouched and unexplored.

At the same time, one of the distinct flavors of everything Martin touches is a dry irony, undershot with sadness. Even at his funniest, there's always the sense of imminent loss or that what was supposed to be true actually isn't. In Martin's world, as we see in The Underpants, things are contingent. The world begins secure but is then completely transformed by some accident, usually trivial and a little goofy. A pretty girl drops her drawers and a society is up-ended. It's the anarchic stuff of which great comedy is born.

For further reading:
Martin, Steve. Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life. New York: Scribners, 2008.

Sorry. Everything about Carl Sternheim is in German.

* Note for Steve Martin quote: Fong-Torres, Ben (1983) "Steve Martin Sings: The Rolling Stone Interview."