Word: comic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...praise him excessively. Yet his subtle, dashing Macheath deserves every superlative in my critical vocabulary. With just a twinkle of his eye he tells you what he's thinking, makes you an accomplice in his delight. He and Philip Heckscher, as Macheath's helpmate filch, perfectly time their comic gestures to suit their songs. And they both have rich, pleasing voices. Richard Backus, as Locket, is the male counterpart of Miss Levine, a slapstick scene stealer with a comically mobile face. Unfortunately awkward, for he seems unsure of himself, stumbling over his lines and stiffly declaiming his songs. Still...
...Three characters on a suspension bridge, suffering garrulously from every known brand of self-pity. Theater of the absurd? Certainly, but the flawless comic acting talents of Anne Jackson, Alan Arkin and Eli Wallach make it hilarious...
With Mandalayan subtlety it dawns on us what director Joel Schwartz is up to. He is putting on a comic opera and he is distinctly uneasy about it. He says in a program note he has "used the technical aspects of the production to reinforce the conventions of dramatic and musical structure." He might better have said, "to excuse" them...
...speak for the technical quality of the music, but certainly was the life of the production. Coordination between the singers and the orchestra, which was off to the left of the stage, was surprisingly good, the timing of intricate comic songs, nearly perfect...
...Mike Nichols touch, always deft, daft and droll, flicks The Odd Couple along at a dervish's pace. But it is Neil Simon's comic freshness of vision that provides the inner momentum. Simon rarely tosses a line straight up in the air for an isolated gag; he hits it across a net of personal relationships so that a steady volley of wit builds up out of character and situation. Simon also knows how to prod a cliché off its bed of banality so that it walks toward the brink of logical absurdity. "Who'd send...