Word: comic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Sophomore year, I sat in the top row and deftly employed a water-pistol during particularly tedious moments. For my junior year tests, I dropped marbles down the stairs--on the right track, but still not distracting enough. Last January, I achieved comic nirvana; I brought a slinky to finals, and started it off on the top stair, ten minutes before the three hours were up, and patiently watched those coils undulate down the steps, taking a good five minutes to get to the ground floor. I am glad that I am a senior--how could I top that, next...
Christopher Durang, 28, is a grandchild of the movie age, and his play, A History of the American Film, is a comic memorial to our movie mania. In a little over two hours, Durang recomposes America's entire cinematic history, from Orphans of the Storm to The Exorcist, including everything in between, from the screwball comedies of the '30s to Elizabeth Taylor screaming at Richard Burton in the '60s. In Durang's hands the familiar images always take an unexpected turn, however, and he proves that there is nothing so funny as the cliche...
...changing roles with suit able off-center fidelity. Special praise should go to Udana Power, who maintains a wide-eyed innocence through more than 50 years of changing features, and to Roger Robinson, whose five parts include both the piano player from Casablanca and Viola, the archetype of all comic maids. As Viola he is transcendentally ridiculous, bustling ever back ward and sounding alarmingly like a zither that is about to lose its strings...
Ironies such as this occurred throughout the show. Its creators, realizing that the average American's conception of mime includes whiteface makeup, clowning, and exaggeration, began many of the sketches in a comic spirit, which later gave way to a more serious message. Once the audience was conditioned to the shock value the medium is capable of, the actors presented a wide variety of emotions and ideas in later sketches...
...astonishingly versatile English director Frank Dunlop has maintained an admirably sane balance between the ironic lightness of Chekhov's comedy and the Stygian strain of his pathos. For the subtlest of comic relief, Dunlop could not have wished for anything better than that provided by Barnard Hughes as a compassionate, sodden and cheerily nihilistic regimental doctor. In serving Chekhov with unswerving fidelity, BAM adds another medal of honor to its growing collection...