Word: circusing
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...then, to engage psychotic adults on their own terms. The only answer was to drop out of the comic's traditional adversary relationship to power and, instead, parade an anarchic childishness. Their banner might have read HELL, NO, WE WON'T GROW UP. In Britain, Monty Python's Flying Circus tossed music-hall bawdry into a Dada format, and at home National Lampoon updated sick humor with a stinging Wasp edge. They were vicious; they were silly; they couldn't care less. And now someone had to shatter the lulling cadences of stand-up too. Who better than the child...
Farce makes such weighty points through belly-aching humor, a point director Chad Raphael well understands. His stagings are often brilliantly choreographed, bringing out the full chaotic energy of the work. The nightclub entertainment scene metamorphoses into a very credible three-ring circus complete with a strong man in a leopard skin (Ken), scantily-clad female (Lisa Lindley), fat lady (Eileen), can-can dancer (Ted), and Elvis impersonator (Donal Logue)--a deliriously wild spectacle that is one of this show's unforgettable moments. In this scene, Raphael also reminds us of Orton's message that we are all guests...
BREAD AND CIRCUS...
...that today William Marcy Tweed is recalled mainly by the sobriquet Boss. But Novelist Morris Renek knows that the bulbous, corrupt Tammany Hall leader was not merely a caricaturist's dream. He was an authentic 19th century figure with plans and desires -- not all of them villainous. Bread and Circus imagines Tweed in his salad days, graduating from modest alderman to urban caliph. The campaigner swiftly learns to deny himself nothing, devouring vast meals, acquiring power at the expense of the citizenry, puffing like a beached whale as he sports in the percales with a period piece named Augusta Cordell...
...atomic conflict breed mutant thoughts. "Suppose I survive," Amis speculates, "then -- God willing, if I still have the strength, and, of course, if they are still alive -- I must find my wife and children and I must kill them." In the parables that follow this shocking statement, a former circus strongman discovers his family murdered by London toughs, a case of schizophrenia mirrors a fractured universe, a dragon-size dog ritually feeds on the residents of a small village, and in the year 2020, time becomes a fatal disease. A recurrent theme is that the world has lost its grip...