Word: charming
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...close, McCartney can flash his ever ready charm at will. One minute he's open and sincere; the next he's closed, in automatic public relations mode. He's a clever lad, practical in business matters yet irreverent at heart. He's eager to put you at ease, but he gets miffed if you pry too closely. Just a few friends ever see the McCartney house, set in the forest in Sussex. His & Scottish estate is reachable only by foot across a bog or by four-wheel drive. Decades of Beatlemania haven't dehumanized him, but he has learned...
What A.R. Gurney is for the old money set, Richard Greenberg is for yuppie arrivistes: a rueful chronicler of meaningless manners, misbegotten mores and loves gone wrong. THE EXTRA MAN, off-Broadway, focuses on a figure common to both circles: the unattached man of uncertain sexuality and undeniable charm who is always on hand for friends and in fact lives through them, sometimes in ways meddlesome or even Machiavellian. Boyd Gaines, who won a Tony Award as a saintly gay doctor in The Heidi Chronicles, balances amiability and creepiness in the role. He is ably backed by TV stars Adam...
...obvious. Ethel Merman trumpets Blow, Gabriel, Blow; Fred Astaire croons Night and Day; and Mary Martin purrs her way through My Heart Belongs to Daddy. But more interesting are the unexpected matches and offbeat finds. Marion Harris, a now forgotten star, strikes a provocative balance of plaintive charm and rhythmic sophistication in a 1930 recording of You Do Something to Me. For Miss Otis Regrets, Ethel Waters' well-known version is bypassed in favor of one by blues singer Alberta Hunter because, as album editor Dwight Blocker Bowers notes, she gives this uniquely bitter nonsense song "Porter's sassy spirit...
...BOTTOM LINE: An unashamedly old-fashioned, optimistic tale, told with charm and polish...
...unabashed political concern. Second, it tackles issues with more complexity than is found in most musicals. Third, it is unashamedly old-fashioned -- talky, story-driven, folksy and optimistic. What one can't foretell is that mostly obscure creators and cast can achieve a show of such charm and polish, so heartstring-tugging and hugely likable...