Word: comic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...piece has a good, basic comic premise in the puzzled response of the black-clad, soberly Unitarian locals to the exotic birds of passage who have come to light among them. This is nicely realized in the film by Felix, an unpretentiously bohemian artist, recognizing in his cousin Gertrude a fellow spirit struggling to burst free. The couple, played with lively grace by Tim Woodward and Lisa Eichhorn, provide the movie with its most beguiling passages, and their story, his winning her away from the lumpish minister her family intends her to marry, gives it its strong est narrative pulse...
Though it is Mickey's first Broadway show, it is not his first time in burlesque His mother was a showgirl, his father was a vaudeville comic. Mickey, who was born Joe Yule Jr., was telling jokes onstage almost before he could talk. "The jokes are like old friends," he says. "My father was a burlesque comic, and now I am too. It's a complete circle. I am my father's son. I am my father." Neither mother nor father did very well in burlesque, however, and money problems led to divorce. Mickey's mother...
...director schooled in the stylistic demands of black humor might have coaxed a few laughs from the material. Director Norman Jewison (Rollerball, F.I.S.T.) is not that man. His movie's helter-skelter tone swivels irrationally and usually heads straight for a dead end. Mad scenes, broad comic bits and mournful monologues are so indiscriminately mixed that the audience often does not know how to respond. At one point the movie comes to a halt so that we can go on a supposedly comic helicopter ride. There are also pointless interludes in which the hero visits his humorless grandfather...
...with a balky wig, Rooney breathes lewd life into the traditional courtroom skit as he scoots down from the bench for a popeyed examination of Miller's aphrodisiacal legs. The role of the intermission bandit who hawks candy and salacious Parisian pictures is played with gruff and raffish comic aplomb by Sid Stone...
Most of the cast is competent but uninspired, and clearly a bit confused about how to interpret the play. Kirsten Giroux's Goneril is a shallow, cold bitch-queen; Janet Rodger's Regan a bit more of a bitchy housewife. Henry Woronicz's Edmund swaggers like a comic hero, an illegitimate Petruchio. Harold Levine's Cornwall is a snivelling rat of a villain, more disgusting than threatening...