Word: bernard
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Screenplay by Bernard Slade...
...regularly issued supplements, the OED has served as the last word on English words. But now, 350 years after the first British settlers arrived on these shores, and 200 years after the locals sent their British bosses packing, the Oxford authorities have decided to acknowledge the American Revolution. George Bernard Shaw once said, "England and American are two countries separated by a common language." Oxford does not try to bridge the gap; instead it has attempted to master the language from across the ocean...
...first, a far from capacity audience arrived a little dubious. They left, however, weeping and cheering. "I haven't seen scenes like that in 25 years of theatergoing," marveled Irving Wardle, the Times theater critic. After a column by the Times's Bernard Levin that was a mixture of rave, clarion call and marching order, Nicholas Nickleby became not only a triumph but a phenomenon. The R.S.C. was back from the brink again...
...interlude entitled New-Found-Land. In the committee-room that the sex-scandal investigators have temporarily vacated, an elderly and a youthful Home Office bureaucrat deliver monologues to each other that epitomize stereotypical visions of England and America. The break is a welcome one. Keith Rogal as Bernard-- the senescent and near-deaf senior officer whose droning, endless tale of a five-pound bet with Lloyd George is by far the evening's funniest sequence-- turns hesitation into a form of comic torture, and uses stock mannerisms of old age to excellent effect...
...Francisco, from one cliche of 1930s America to another--Hell's Kitchen, Chicago newsmen, dustbowls, Okies and all. With a wild eye and a remarkable range of voices, Mann holds the audience's attention and summons into the theater the images in Stoppard's oration. The transition from Bernard's somnolent maunderings to Arthur's vigorous gesticulating ought to develop more gradually, however; by jumping head-first into his monologue, Mann loses an opportunity to scale the intensity of his speech in an upward arc, making this vastness of exposition more listenable...