Word: absurdities
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...professor is sapped of youthful energy, and the absurd, exaggerated pettiness of life buzzes around his ears like a mosquito he can neither see nor swat. McCormmach skillfully tinges Jakob's world with Kafkaesque visions. As he talks to the director of the physics institute, Jakob realizes that the man "hadn't heard a word. But perhaps he hadn't said anything." The resident assistant professor erases Jakob's equations and Scrawls in a corner of the blackboard, "Prof. Jakob's space." The janitor steals Jakob's equipment. Jakob can only retaliate by writing a note to the director...
...these circles, there is perhaps less evil than ignorance, less design than accident. Doodling with the faceless technological passion of institute directors, people talk knowledgeably about "windows of vulnerability." "throw-weight," and of putting missiles on trains, an idea as absurd as mounting them in baby carriages. But as we, like Europe before 1914, lunch we know not where, absurdity becomes dangerous, and no longer only sad, as was Jakob's bitter luxury. Next time, no one will read of an old man's cold pleasures, of musing over weak tea about shattered, harmonies and faded memories, in ruins wrought...
...change. Written by George Feydeau, the play consists of condemned prisoner's monologue. Played by Peter L. Stein, the prisoner agonizes over his hopeless fate as he relates the story of his imprisonment and subsequent sentence of death. Through the prisoner's dimwitted innocence and straightforward telling of the absurd facts of this supposed crime, the play mocks the injustices of the French judicial system in the late 1890s. Stein's performance is startling as he maintains the prisoner's naivete throughout this long time on stage. In the tale of the prisoner's conviction for the bizarre murder...
...Passionelle, is indeed mistaken for a murderer, when in fact he is only a love-stricken professor of Latin. Stein as Dupont adds a sense of ingenuousness as he did earlier as the prisoner. Spouting off Latin phrases in propitious moments. Dupont's role increases the web of absurd confusion throughout the play...
...COURSE, absurd, Who can help but giggle at the specter of two-thirds of the British navy steaming toward the South Atlantic to defend a remote, treeless string of islands, smaller than Connecticut, and populated by 1300 sheep farmers? The gallant sailor-boys (including, we are told, the ever-so-dashing Prince Andrew) are off to fight a brutal military regime, most famous for its human rights violations, whose invasion of the Falkland islands last week was clearly a ploy to distract its citizens' attention away from a serious domestic economic and political crisis. The dimensions of the situation which...