Word: comic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Gilbert and Sullivan Players have mounted a thoroughly banal version of Ruddigore at the Agassiz. That the show is nonetheless delightful is one proof more that nothing but a tone-deaf cast and orchestra can wreck these comic operettas...
...wants to be sensitive, wants to be a poet, wants to be in love. True, he is awkward and amusing (He writes poetry he does not understand, paraphrased from Zen poets), but he is also a human being. As performed by David Pollock, though, he is a silly comic prop--a cardboard version of Art Carney's Ed Norton characterization...
...Notable in this regard are Paul Fry's simple modular settings, which combine function with a sort of determined elegance rare to house stages. Equally significant is Mr. Bloch's decision to emphasize the inherent humor of line and situation, and to use a liberal hand in devising comic business. Although occasionally subtle antics which animate the human background throughout the evening distract from more important actions, the general effect is one of rich detail, and this must be judged a special pleasure while Harvard theater is so often plagued by underrealized staging. Much of the politically cheering impact...
...performances, though uneven in control and focus, all suggest a remarkable investment of energy. There results a sense of restrained favor in the playing which makes up for occasional lapses in comic timing. A great deal of good-natured conviction appears on stage inSchweyk, and from the standpoint again of didactic theater, nothing is so important as this. John Tatlock as Schweyk and Gerard Shepherd as his gluttonous companion Baloun are admirable, though I wished in each case for certain qualities of size, and especially of what can only be called earthiness--which only actors of considerably more...
With all its contributing sources of energy and intelligence, this Schweyk advances its premise farther than any overview of the text might suggest would be possible. The amount of didactic mileage concealed in a series of simple comic vignettes pitting a group of small-time Czechs against a team of penny Nazis is something to experience for oneself. Though it may not finally upset one's faith in the Kafka version, this production will give that faith a thoroughly healthy shaking-up. That much, at least, I think we deserve...