Word: absurder
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...intense symbolism of the play deteriorates into absurd melodrama; the bad attempts at making the bizarre characters seem attractive are irritating; and the very frustration of watching their slow descent into damnation makes your eyes glaze over...
Margaret Gibson's version of Hesione Hushabye, Shotover's daughter, would be perfectly charming if the viewer only had to bear her company for 15 minutes or so. She makes a delightful first impression, with her endless charm and sinuous steps. Unfortunately, Gibson's method of delivering Hesione's absurd pieces of babytalk--such as "prettikins" and "daddyest"--is horribly artificial, and her languorous speech and movements seem too derivative of Morticia Addams...
Carswell's further discussion of the O.A. is quite to the point--he himself realizes its superiority to any E., however A. His illustration includes one of the key "Wake Up the Grades" phrases--"It is absurd." What force! What gall! What fun! "Ridiculous," "hopeless," "nonsense," on the one hand; "doubtless," "obvious," "unquestionable," on the other, will have the same effect. A hint of nostalgic, antiacademic languor at this stage as well may match the grader's own mood: "It seems more than obvious to one entangled in the petty quibbles of contemporary Medievalists--at times, indeed, approaching the ludicrous...
...long run the expert in the use of unwarranted assumptions comes off better than the equivocator. He would deal with our question on Hume not by baffling the grader or by fencing with him but like this: "It is absurd to discuss whether Hume is representative of the age in which he lived unless we note the progress of that age on all intellectual fronts. After all, Hume did not live in a vacuum...
...tend to degenerate into a protracted joke at the expense of the crude plot. But Skin and Bone avoids this temptation. Rather than 100 minutes of dreary self-parody, the production flings itself into the play with gay abandon. Of course it still appears garish, over-the-top, even absurd; but it is not cast as simply worthless. The distinction may seem subtle, but it makes the difference between a snide exercise in self-congratulation and a vigorous rendition of a difficult, dated play...