Word: banally
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Interesting stuff, but not the stuff of live drama. The conversations and confrontations are too low-key to acquire any dramatic tension, and not banal enough to reach a Pinteresque plateau of menace Chunks of the play are dedicated to give-and-takes between the various permutations of Stewart. Barbara and Bob debating the necessity, the ability, the desirability, and the morality of helping the Mr. Stewarts of this world. Every one of these dialogues rings true, but not one rings interesting...
...confuse eloquence with elephantiasis, the size of Golub's figures seems justified and necessary. Only by monumentalizing their documentary content could he give it the kind of fixity and silence it needed, and only that way could he achieve his peculiar balance between the sacrificial and the banal and so get rid of the sour whiff of pornography that attends images of extreme violence...
Usually, the machines are more banal than that. They do still make people uncomfortable, although that is passing with familiarity. Their use has become so widespread that callers no longer feel quite so much the instant of stage fright. Still, the tape on the end of the line, expectantly unreeling, silent as a director awaiting the audition, does intimidate. The caller feels ambushed, like one who has suddenly learned he is being bugged. He becomes more ... responsible for his words. They are not going to vanish into air. They can be replayed again and again, like the videotape...
...least articulate movies ever made. Its dialogue is deliberately banal, half-formed thoughts trying to force their way through a screen of cliches. And it is often murmured in tones an American auditor may have trouble apprehending...
...were as exquisite as The Intimate Toilette, the little panel that is shown for the first time in this exhibition, the loss must be considered heavy. He never married. He kept no journal, and no undisputed letters by him survive. The only writings in his hand are a few banal jottings on the back of drawings. They do not contain a word about the theory of painting; perhaps he had none...