The Servant of Two Masters

Take a young couple about to be wed, add two manipulating fathers, a saucy maid, a gourmet innkeeper, a misjudged killer, a woman dressed as a man, awkward porters and rude waiters with a dash of a mischievous servant and you have Carlo Goldoni’s commedia dell’arte masterpiece, The Servant of Two Masters.

At its center is the scheming (and perpetually hungry) servant, Truffaldino, who concocts a zany scheme to double his wages (and his meals) by serving two masters at once. While Goldoni’s Venetian romps was written in the eighteenth century, audience members will recognize timeless comic devices reminiscent of the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges and Charlie Chaplin’s “The Little Tramp.”