Word: caesarism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Apart from their petrifying boredom, the one quality that unites both these musicals is effrontery. Her First Roman has the gall to take Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra and suffocate it in dullness...
This takes inconceivable effort, since making Shaw dull is rather like making sex dull. Shaw's words sing; this cast singsongs, and a woodpecker on a hollow log would have produced a more tuneful score. Richard Kiley's Caesar has faint, weary traces of Shaw's philosopher-king, but Leslie Uggams is a drowned kitten of the Nile without a hint of incipient regality...
Wacky, rapid-fire comedy is not new to TV. Indeed, Laugh-In's attack has touches of the late Ernie Kovacs, smatterings of early Sid Caesar and Steve Allen, and a-pie-in-the-face splat or two of Soupy Sales. But on Laugh-In, the calculated aim is to create a state of sensory overload, a condition that audiences nowadays seem to want or need. Blackouts, slapstick, instant skits pinwheel before the eyes; chatter and sound effects collide in the ear. Other TV variety shows can be dropped intact onto a theater or nightclub stage, but Laugh...
...FIRST ROMAN, based on Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra. With Richard Kiley and Leslie Uggams...
...approved by its stockholders, MCA will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Westinghouse. For MCA, one of the principal attractions of the $385 million stock-swap deal is Westinghouse's higher dividend. And nobody stands to benefit more than MCA's founder and chief stockholder, Chairman Jules Caesar Stein, 72, whose 27% stake in the company has a current market value of almost $90 million. By converting his MCA holdings to Westinghouse stock, Stein's annual dividend return would rise from $1,200,000 a year...