Word: comic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Julius Caesar is a no-nonsense play. It gets right down to business and sticks to business. There is no sub-plot, no comic relief, not even any mildly humorous lines except for a handful of Casca's; and the play is freer of bawdry than any other save Richard II. Aside from a little compression of chronology, Shakespeare followed closely his three source biographies in Plutarch's Lives, often just turning its line of prose into verse...
...first U.S. professional production of Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy was adorned by Dame Judith Anderson as a marvelously menacing Clytemnestra who turned the ball field into a nightmare-real landscape of bloody tragedy. The second night turned tears to laughter, with oldtime Comic Bert Lahr, 70, playing the Birds...
...duel between Andrew and Cesario offers a director a fine chance to show some comic inventiveness, and fortunately Hauser was up to it. Andrew begins the fight with a fencing manual in his left hand, and before you know it Cesario with up holding both swords. In a subsequent go-around Andrew is so afraid of opening his eyes that he finds himself blindly bashing against the sword hanging at Sir Toby's side. This whole skirmish is a howl...
...Henry IV, Falstaff and Hal spend a lot of time carousing and frolicking together. In the present play, the dramatist has very carefully decreased Hal's participation in the comic scenes in order to prepare the prince -- and us -- for Hal's eventual and necessary rejection of Falstaff and the world of wantonness and waste he represents. Anthony has missed this point completely. What the Bard hath put asunder, let no man join together...
Over the years he became a polished comic who never had to resort to blue material to get a laugh. In fact, he was responsible for the biggest clean joke in theater history. As a speakeasy waiter in the 1927 musical Manhattan Mary, he hovered over a gangster who asked him what there was to eat. "Jelly roll," suggested the comedian, "or perhaps the gentleman would like some nice ladyfingers." "Ladyfingers!" roared the gunsel. "My God, I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!" Whereupon Wynn ran offstage and returned leading a full-grown sway-backed horse...