Word: comical
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Still, there are some good things about the show. Sammy Davis Jr., looking like an absurd Harlemization of Chico Marx, makes a wonderfully silly stinker out of Sportin' Life. The singing is generally good-particularly the comic bits by Pearl Bailey and the ballads by Adele Addison, who sings the role of Bess while Dorothy Dandridge acts it. And the color photography gains a remarkable lushness through the use of filters, though in time -2 hr. 36 min., including an intermission -the spectator may get tired of the sensation that he is watching the picture through amber-colored sunglasses...
...effort at global satire proves too strenuous. In spite of a climax as apocalyptic as any since King Kong was shot off the top of the Empire State Building, Author Condon falters as he battles both cold-war antagonists simultaneously. But in his comic set pieces, he is wickedly skillful. The book's most memorable incident reveals the true story of the Senator's battle scar. Stationed in Greenland, far from the smell of gunpowder but also far from any American women, the legislator-to-be seeks out the sealskinned houris of an Eskimo camp. A fight starts...
...farce furiously, and abridge or soft-pedal the Claudio-Hero plot. Other things being equal, this may be the best solution--it is certainly the easiest. But Rabb has favored or scrimped no element in the play; he has lavished as much care on the serious as on the comic and farcical aspects. Consequently we can best see the play as it really is: when the lines soar, this production soars; when the writing flags, so does the production. The director's decision was daring, dangerous, and difficult; and I doff my derby in docile deference...
Richard Easton's Romeo is unevenly effective. He has on previous occasions shown great skill with smaller roles, especially comic ones (his Puck last summer was tops). But Romeo marks his first traversal of a long, serious part for the Festival; and there is no reason to expect it to be definitive yet. He clearly has a fine Romeo within him, though. His diction is clear. He has no trouble making Romeo young enough--and young he must be: Romeo matures a little during the play's course, but he never does become a man. At present, however, Easton...
...Shor's Manhattan saloon one afternoon in 1956, when Pat and a pal, Lynn Phillips, were relaxing from their jobs as time salesmen for NBCTV. They were already practiced hands at the dialect spoof. Pat had picked up a talent for mimicry from his father, a successful nightclub comic of the '30s, and he and his friend used their skill as a "sales adjunct" when they wanted to warm up prospects with a laugh or two. That afternoon in Shor's, the Andrea Doria collision was still in the headlines, so Phillips swung naturally into the Italian...