Word: comic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...before they find a husband for her "shrewish" sister Kate. But problems are never entirely eliminated in comedies. They are only, humorously, compounded. When Kate, the shrew, finishes the play as a lady and Bianca, the lady, is unmasked as the true shrew, the switch testifies to the natural comic order of things. And in doing so, it rescues this early Shakespeare from pure farce...
...Miller, who has played More twice before, certainly seems to know what he's doing this time around. In John Manulis's production at the Loeb Ex, Miller's More is surrounded by an aura of saintliness from the very beginning. While he delivers More's witticisms with neat comic timing, the Lord Chancellor's unearthly rectitude remains clearly predominant over his passion for life. We know from the first that here is a man not long for this world...
...Tragic, comic and sentimental as only Irish plays can be, The Plough and the Stars is one of the plays that has made Ireland's Abbey Theatre world-renowned (not only as a center of culture, but as the focus of controversy). The Plough and the Stars was chosen for the Abbey's bicentennial tour in New York and Boston because it was definitive in developing the "Abbey style" of Irish realism: perfect brogues, meticulous blocking, sublime melodrama...
...purpose and deep emotion. Why, then, such a mediocre product? Although Allen and Mostel turn in excellent performances, neither are quite right for their roles. Allen particularly does not fit in a movie of this type. He is the classic nebbish, but the very qualities that contribute to his comic genius detract from the solemnity of the film. The mere sight of his face and sound of his voice, regardless of the unhumorous context, provokes laughter, interjecting unintentional but damaging levity...
...lives were destroyed by the insanity of the "commie-hunters" and many of the driving forces behind the film were only too well aware of that fact. Compelled by the need to make a poignant statement about the horrors of those years, they nevertheless could not fully resist the comic impulses with which they have been blessed. Unfortunately for The Front, their blessing was the film's curse, and their powerful statement was inadvertently but inevitably rendered ineffective...