Word: comedist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? The question is not exactly new, but it has rarely been posed more deftly and disarmingly than in the 21st work of the wistful comedist A.R. Gurney, whose best previous plays (Sweet Sue, Love Letters) also centered on the disruptive consequences of love unpursued. Gurney is often pegged as an elegist for the waning Wasp. In Later Life he makes great efforts to usher in characters outside that stereotype. They are Irish, Jewish, Texan and techno-nerd; one woman is a lesbian, one man gay, and these...
...these people see themselves as morally normal -- and playwright Alan Ayckbourn, Britain's leading comedist, plainly thinks they are. Although the corruption depicted in A Small Family Business embraces fraud, the Mafia and murder, it takes place in bland, beige, suburban houses where the residents are preoccupied with recipes, hemlines and their dogs. And while the accents are recognizably British, the decor and, by implication, the bad behavior would seem right at home in Middle America...
...toward the limits imposed on her by life and by her loved ones. Abruptly, spectators who were crying with laughter are simply crying, without any sense of being manipulated. The ability to find humor in unlikely places, then shift emotional gears with no machinery showing, makes Simon a great comedist...
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