Word: balloon
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...situations are seldom better than the lines, being funny mainly when the action is slapstick--a plant suddenly sprouting in joyful abundance all over the stage is the most bearable example. But the author occasionally leaps out of his verbal rut to pierce a pet political balloon very neatly: "Senator Cotton Joe Somethingorother is in the hospital." "Disease serious?" "Senility." "Then how can he be chairman of our committee?" Seniority." But originality is not rampant even here. Nowhere in the play is the humor more than mildly reminiscent of author John Patrick's lighthearted previous creation, Teahouse of the August...
Exploding the devices from balloons will reduce this local fallout. There will be no tower to vaporize (the balloon hardly counts), and if the balloon is tethered high enough, the rising cloud will drag no hot dust with...
...this would be no better show business than it is playwriting. But Mayehoff has no equal at harrumphing or at jerking his head, at skinning a cliché or stuffing a shirt or making very little sound like even less. And no one has quite the lost-in-a-balloon aplomb or the Mad-King-of-Bavaria hauteur of Cyril Ritchard. At the same time no one knows more surefire tricks. Ritchard will do as many absurd and outrageous things to keep an audience amused as a desperate father will do to make his four-year-old darling...
...efforts-with realistic safeguards-so long as any possibility of success exists. But in leading his listeners to think that the U.S. may be on the verge of bargaining away NATO's strength, or about to make a cynical deal with the Russians, Harold Stassen flew his trial balloon too high, forced Secretary Dulles to haul it down discreetly at his press conference...
...only as a historical document." The document was crudely etched. Because both funds and the spare time of modern scientists were at a premium, there were few rehearsals and few retakes. Budgetary corners were sharply cut, e.g., when Seaborg asked for a relief globe he got a weather balloon, and when that burst, made do with a beach ball. But the producers and performers in The Elements were not haunted by the limitations of commercial TV, and therefore were able to build their shows on the conception that their viewers would look because they wanted to be taught and challenged...