Word: comic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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However, Sebastian Conley crossed the line in his comic strip "Seth Lives" when he portrayed former president Ronald Reagan as forgetting his lines at the re-naming ceremonies of North House (Editorial Cartoon, Opinion Page, Dec. 12). The character Seth leaned into the frame and informed Reagan. "That's Pforzheimer House, not Alzheimer's House...
...costume designer William Ivey Long, choreographer Susan Stroman and lyricist Lynn Ahrens. Some are working at half speed. Menken's melodies are less inventive than his scores for the Disney cartoons The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. He gets a B+ for hummable ballads and ho-humbuggable comic turns. Stroman's jazziest ideas are reprises of her dancing-on-furniture number from Crazy for You. Ahrens' lyrics are wan, snapless. It takes a while for the 90-min. show to become more than the sum of its parts...
...face value. The performances are therefore far nimbler than is typical, but such is the virtuosity of Gardiner's 60-piece orchestra that the music never seems rushed or scrambled. Listen, for example, to the famous finale of the Ninth / Symphony. The "Turkish march" usually sounds like an inappropriately comic intrusion in an otherwise profound movement. Gardiner takes the passage nearly twice as fast as most other conductors do, and as a result it sounds fitting, a natural outgrowth of the period's fascination with martial Janissary music...
...Wooster. Tori Jueds is strong as the prim Rose Maybud, though one gets frustrated with her etiquette-obsessed, lightweight character. Rose is most interesting when interacting with her social opposite and some-time-fiance, the lusty sailor Richard, played on some evenings by Douglas Miller. Richard should be pure comic relief for the audience: a nautical libertine among the prim British. Unfortunately, although Miller's voice is strong and expressive, his stiff, blocky stage presence and emotionless facial expressions make him ill-suited to this comic role...
Efron's sense of comic timing really helps. Several lines which might have been marginally funny end up hilarious. At one point, Tanner tells Elaine, "I just want to be pals...plus a little extra...