Word: cleverer
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...lovers: two are buffoons, her husband and a stranger he recruited to cheer her up, and one, a thirteen-year-old boy, is sensitive to her need for friendship. The plot is inconsistent, the jokes are obvious, and the direction is heavy handed. You might find this film a clever and coy French farce--if you're drunk...
...Dudley House production is full of good actors; unfortunately, the role of Alceste is miscast and the weak lead seriously disables this Misanthrope. The show lacks pacing and modulations of tone. Alceste's non-stop bombast ruins Moliere's clever commentary on the futility of one sincere idealist's battle against a self-deceiving world. The Misanthrope is a drawing-room comedy, and this version still needs a little work back at the drawing board...
Birdy is skinny--hence the nickname--clever, and eccentric. He learns to live with pigeons, sews himself a pigeon suit, even fashions wings for himself after practicing flapping his arms. He studies canary language, and falls in love with a cute canary named Perta with whom he has his own brood, before finally succumbing completely to bird madness...
Most of Stephen Sondheim's score matches the best competition-Stephen Sondheim. However, Broadway's Uris Theater is the worst place to hear his intricately clever lyrics. As a tractor factory, the cavernous Uris might pass muster, but as a theater, no. Irony is Sondheim's razor, and its cutting edge is equally present in bittersweet ballads (Pretty Women, Johanna) or in A Little Priest, an antic account of what kinds of pies the varying professions taste like ("Here's a politician so oily/ It's served with a doily...
...Sager's lyrics score no higher than Bs, but they possess a finger-snapping vitality that turns explosive in the title number. A well-earned A goes to Douglas W. Schmidt's stunningly sophisticated sets, Tharon Musser's evocative lighting and Ann Roth's clever costumes. Great joy has come to Shubert Alley...