Word: cartoonishly
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...performances of the enormous cast (some of the posters read: "You must know someone in it") are mostly passable. All of Piper's characters are cartoonish, but they are played with a great deal comedic prowess. The standout is the prosecuting attorney, outrageously played by Paul Siemens. Loud, obnoxious, and similar to William Jennings Bryant in his legal style, Siemens overwhelms everyone on stage as he assassinates Zed's character. The bland, short-skirted defense attorney (Emmy Cattani) never had a chance, in legalese or stage presence...
...virus" forces him to be extremely careful and up front with his sexual partners. Even while making love, he prays not to "give her my curse." It becomes clear that Jimi hasn't totally submitted to the insensitive, hopeless grinder through which the world has plugged him. In a cartoonish way, he still cares, and that in turn makes us care. The question remains, however, whether he cares, or we care, enough...
Obsession, when it takes hold, is not a fragrance but a lethal gas. It envelops and consumes us; it is all the air we breathe. It should make for an ideal film subject. But moviemakers rarely know what to do with obsession. They make it trivial, cartoonish. A superfiend itches to blow up the planet -- big hairy deal. An id-monster like Freddy Krueger dices and slices kids as they sleep. Zzzzzz...
...production itself is another matter. Rather than trusting the music to make its effect, Graham Vick offers instead a cartoonish and superfluous gloss on the sardonic opera. Vick, the director of productions for the Glyndebourne Festival, and his all-British production team have set the action in the deprived consumer hell of the Soviet 1950s: Katerina's erotic fantasies, for example, run to materialistic visions of brides wielding vacuum cleaners. $ Symbols of heavy industry like cranes, tractors and forklifts move props (such as Katerina's marital bed) on and off stage, and Katerina's feckless husband is buried...
...typical all-male rock band is a roiling bouillabaisse of sexual competition and desire, and that is reflected in the music. "There is a different atmosphere in a coed band," says drummer Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, a pioneering male-and-female group. Coed bands usually avoid cartoonish, bombastic sexuality except to ridicule it. Their songs often seek to understand the differences between the genders, and they are often painfully self-critical. Lyrics to Frente!'s Labour of Love go, "I don't know how I bent/ What you said to what I believe you meant." Says N'Dea Davenport...