Word: absurdes
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...permit issued to McDonald's by the City License Commission on January 25 was legal. "How could the commission give out a permit when the restaurant hasn't even been built, and when health and building inspectors haven't even set foot on the premises?" Vellucci asked. "That's absurd...
...Ionesco's Rhinoceros received a different treatment. The script was tampered with. New scenes were added, old dialogue was cut. Names and settings were Americanized, and pop music was introduced. The flavor of Ionesco's work was lost. Director Tom O'Horgan transformed Ionesco's forceful drama of the Absurd into a banal comedy...
...Theater of the Absurd is based on an alliance of ideology and form which demonstrates the cultural isolation of modern man. The assumption behind the movement is that man has been cut off from the religious faith and the certitudes of the past. All of his actions are senseless. They have no context. In line with this ideology, the dramatists of the Absurd school have rejected the rational dramatic devices of traditional theater. Blatant incongruity and senselessness replace familiar logical forms. Simple stage sets become the best representation of the modern world...
...fastidious gentleman, slowly changing into a rhinoceros before our eyes, is wonderful. His extraordinary facial expressions and contortions transform him into a wild, snorting beast. He begins charging around his bedroom smashing furniture and eating plants. Unfortunately, though this transformation scene is funny, and Mostel is at his absurd best, the scene is just too long and gimmicky. O'Horgan's determination to make the play a conventional comedy ruins the scene. It's always fun to exploit Mostel's talent. But long comic scenes which rely on conventional slapstick devices and stock audience responses have no place in Theater...
...Horgan, who has directed Absurd plays before, says that "The 'absurd' style has always rested uneasily with the naturalism of film." His production has not made a very successful accomodation of the two. The banal absurdity of his comedy version of Rhinoceros is amusing, but forceless. Relying on traditional comic routines and gimmickry, O'Horgan's film hardly approaches the stark abstraction of reality and denial of convention demanded by real Theater of the Absurd. He has made an absurd film of a good play, not a good film of an Absurd play. The American Film Theatre should have stayed...