Word: armanda
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...their hearts out to street audiences in 17th century Italy. Their improvisations were passionate and bawdy, but so charming that even Church-supported French nobility were seduced into laughter. Impresario Flaminio Scala concocted such a dynamic group by painstakingly typecasting each member perfectly. So all they needed to do--Armanda the grotesque but sharp-witted dwarf, Pantalone the cross miserly Jew, Dottore the pompous doctor of quackery, Brighella the spiteful gadfly, and the others--was get up on stage and play themselves to the hilt...
...these intuitive and somewhat pat perceptions, nagging self-doubts dangle at the end of each memoir. But instead of developing their restive psyches, Prose disappointingly cuts the players short. Armanda the dwarf, for example, acknowledges the tension that arises from Flaminio's perfect typecasting, from his refusal to recognize her private soul. But the plot does not allow time for her to develop potential feelings of self-worth that can replace an identity culled from the glory of the stage. Instead, her memoir trails off in confusion, with a lame admission to Flamino that "I myself was never quite sure...
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