Word: comic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...result is a definite success. The extent of the success is a measure both of the good theatrical judgment of Michaels and his company, and of the tremendous virtue of those elements of the text--the love plots, the broad verbal humor, and the many options for comic stage business--which this production plays...
...sure touch for farcical slapstick business, nice details of external characterization, and the blocking of any largish group. He shows less command when he has a small, intimate scene at hand, but when he errs, he does so in the direction of emphasizing frenetic movement, which has a special comic advantage over the static set-ups so familiar to Harvard stages...
...verbal wisdom. Often he finds success in pointing a line with a gesture, but sometimes too, his compositions are simply too full of movement for good focus. On a few occasions, he has literally obscured potentially funny or significant dialog by drawing the audience's attention to some simultaneous comic bit. In a single instance, he shows an excess of reverence to the lines, freezing an admirably raucous forest banquet to a tableau, while Jaques (Kenneth Tiger) puts the "Seven Ages of Men" through their paces. On balance, though, Mr. Michaels has directed his actors to speak with speed, clarity...
...contrast in the court. The images of corruption are a little thin in content, and a bit arty in directional approach, depending on tricks of slow motion and frozer action. Occasionally in the first act, I wished that Mr. Michaels did not know quite so many modern and effective comic tricks: the wrestling match, for example, loses a good deal of force from being treated as a parody of the old TV "groaners," and the faithful servant Adam (Craig Newenhuyse) is sadly reduced by being directed and played a ridiculous grotesque...
...made white." There is Blank, a poet who dabbles in politics and diddles in literature. There is Innocenti, a lawyer passing as a waiter and living out the logical absurdity of a politically engaged nihilist. Pantagleize is oblivious to all except Rachel Silberchatz, a Jewish girl as splinteringly comic in her undeviating revolutionary fanaticism as Pantagleize is in his clownish wooing...