From The Tuscaloosa News: Whether Edmund Kean actually said it on his deathbed or not, comedy is indeed hard.
Student actors in the University of Alabama production of the Marx Brothers’ “Animal Crackers” hope to learn from performers who honed their techniques during endless grueling nights in vaudeville, including one early 20th-century performance in Tuscaloosa in which, noting the crowd’s lack of interest, the brothers dropped to their knees to place bets on a pair of cockroaches scampering across the stage.