Expounding on a scenario familiar to all who have experienced their teenage years with their parents in "Kiss and Tell", Alain de Botton employs colorful characterization, awkward dialogue, and a detached point-of-view to illuminate the way embarrassing, over-bearing parents can elicit a comic effect - if they're not your own.
The author utilizes his considerable skills at overt and subtle characterization to create a humoroous atmosphere within the theater. He does so through all three members of the Rogers family. Isabel possesses a social awareness that her parents apparently do not, and when they obnoxiously strive for her attention with waving and yelling she "smiles feebly, turns a beetroot shade" and tries with all of her might to ignore them. The father is portrayed as the quintissential clueless married man, "looking up at the ceiling with an intent expression" and paying more attention to the light bulbs than the conversation with his daughter. But neither is characterized as vibrantly as Mrs. Rogers, the stereotype of an invasive, intrusive mother who is constantly making incredibly embarrassing commments to her daughter; "pity you don't have more of a cleavage for [the dress]." Right in front of her daughter's date she pints out the small size of her daughter's breasts, clearly an undesirable statement from Isabel's stance. These hilarous characters are the foundation for the comedy of the story.
