Word: bitted
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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People were giggling during certain scenes in Casablanca that seemed to be a bit too real for them to take. I did not hear them giggling at Faces, and, perversely, I conclude that it is because the film was not real enough to move them to embarrassment...
...surface, Stoppard has devised an astoundingly clever theatrical trick. We see only the few scraps of Hamlet that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern see. Since they see so little, Hamlet, Claudius, Ophelia and the rest become merely bit parts in Stoppard's play. We see a mammoth tragedy from the worst possible vantage point, and what little of Shakespeare remains in the play seems ridiculous and funny in this context...
While Stoppard's play could probably not have been written before Beckett come along, it is every bit a peer for Waiting for Godot. The comic and tragic elements, brilliant in themselves, are ingeniously balanced and woven into the Hamlet framework. The dialogue flows like nothing I've heard in a long time, and Stoppard uses the English language with more precision than any other playwright around...
EVER SLEEP with an elephant? Adam does in Norman Dietz' Apple Bit, the second of the three Lowell House absurdities. But, in order to follow the text from Genesis, he jilts the pachyderm before the playlet begins in favor of the more renowned Eve. After all, Eve has her points. As played by Leesa Freedman, Eve tends to do a bump and a grind when a mere bump would suffice. Nevertheless, she's an amusing sharp-tongued every-woman, who insists that her husband stand up to God like a man. And Eve favors hiding after the apple because...
Ionesco's Maid to Marry shares the second act with Apple Bit, and director Mary King Austin chose just the right juxtaposition. Its eminently civilized lady and gentleman are quite absurd. They sit on a 1950's park bench and vacillate between violently tearing up the Times and making profound comments on professions, future, past, ungrateful children. Not a wild west thriller by any means. Still, the patter's amusing...