Word: absurdist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...were plenty of hints, but no real answer, as the Met staged its first new production of a season shortened by labor disputes. It was a trio of French works, with the umbrella title of Parade. The idea of presenting Satie's slight ballet Parade, Poulenc's absurdist opera buffa Les Mamelles de Tirésias and Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilèges came from Met Production Adviser John Dexter. The common theme was not World War I (though with effort all the pieces can be connected to it) but the devices...
...vaulting ambitions, her untempered will, her vulnerable femininity and her invincible Catholicism? Or will he move us by limming the last pathetic hours of a woman at the mercy of a woman who knows no mercy, Elizabeth I? Neither. Hildesheimer believes that history is an obscene irony, an absurdist fable signifying nothing. His prelates, earls, doctors, ladies in waiting and greedy hangers-on vary so little from the monarch that they are all like cards in a stacked deck...
Sergeant Phil Esterhaus (Michael Conrad) is a ham-hock-faced man in his 50s with a gentle disposition, a teenage girlfriend and an absurdist's command of the bureaucratic vocabulary-"Be reminded: female officers will, according to policy, perform all in-depth searches of female suspects." Howard Hunter (James Sikking) is a SWAT man with a Patton complex; he shoots his way into liquor stores and out of toilet stalls, and warns his boss that "you wouldn't want to be accused of having a bunch of daisies where your cinch belt ought to be." Detective Mick Belker...
...servant Cocky--the embodiment of England's righteous lower class--imagine their own metaphysical stage and act out society's cruelties in The Game. As Sir arbitrarily changes the rules, forcing Cocky to grovel for a loaf of bread, Greasepaint seems like a Romper Room production of some absurdist play. For the entire first act, The Game follows its repetitive course with Sir betraying poor, dim-witted Cocky's confidence again and again...
...meant to be taken altogether seriously; Leib's artistry in creating a fine one-act play, and the softpedalled wryness of the pretentious program notes (including quotes from Kafka, Steiner, and Beckett, as well as Wittgenstein) only enhance the subtlety of what amounts to an elaborate parody of an absurdist drama. This is not to say that Leib does not believe in an absurdist view of the universe--he clearly does. He just doesn't believe in writing a play about it. His focus is not on the ideas themselves, which are, as Terry should be the first...