Word: biff
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...travelled. Instead, he has lived the reality of a mediocre selling career with constant indebtedness while trying to conceal it all from his family with fantastical salesman's pitches. Realizing the imminence of his own failure, Willy has tried to vicariously live his dream through his oldest son, Biff, The audience enters the story when Biff, in his thirties, has failed to live up to his father's hopes. Confronted with Biff's refusal, Willy is forced, by the end of the play, out of his world of illusions. In the end, all the slick talk in the world...
Engel does a magnificent job directing the crucial moments of Willy's confrontation with truth. Engel perfectly understands the rhythm of the play's dramatic moments and skillfully draws emotions from the audience. The play is punctuated by emotional moments, such as the scene in which Biff exposes Willy's suicidal tendencies. He hits the rubber pipe on the table which Willy has been planning to use to kill himself. Build, BUILD, BUILD! and then SLAM! the rubber tubing is whipped out, banged on the table and a huge silence descends, a moment Engel creates so that the audience...
Richard Mawe, as Willy, and Ted Reinstein, as Biff, are excellent at leading the cast in what is essentially a father-son play. Mawe has a wonderfully subtle acting style, never overdone, but ready to pounce on every heightened emotion. He moves very naturally between reality and the dream sequences, assisted only by a warm light change and electronic music (which, at times, sounds suspiciously like PBS Wildlife Special accompaniment). Reinstein, funny and charismatic, is also more than prepared for moments such as the "pipe" scene. Other times, he expresses hisdisgust for the city environment in such a waythat...
...their time machine (still that goofily customized DeLorean), Marty and Doc must purloin a locomotive to push the car up to warp speed. Romantic: frenetic Doc smitten by love for -- who else in a western? -- Mary Steenburgen's lovely schoolmarm. Deliciously anticipated: the appearance of Marty's bullying nemesis Biff (Thomas F. Wilson), this time got up as his distant ancestor Buford ("Mad Dog") Tannen, the dumbest gun in the West...
...bankruptcy, and he figures his life has been utterly insignificant. He says, "I wish I had never been born," and then follows that famous ten-minute scene that shows the town of Bedford Falls had George Bailey never been born. It is an alternate reality, like the town with Biff Tannen's hotel. Everybody is much worse off in the town because Mr. Potter owns it now. Therefore even apparently insignificant things, like one man's life in a small town, make an enormous difference...