Word: comical
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...main trouble with The Long Watch seems to be that authors Morrie Ryskind and Harvey Haislip have not quite been able to decide into what genre they want their play to fit. There is neither continuity of style, content, nor emotional response. The dialogue and situations are ostensibly comic until the denouement, when a WAVE falls asleep on the job, causes the death of five aviators including her husband, and ultimately commits suicide. Of course it isn't really a tragedy since for some reason this convinces Washington of the necessity of long-range rescue planes...
John Kriza, as the sly, ribald Bluebeard in the ballet of the same name, was not only deft at comic gestures, but a lively dancer. The entire corps, as a matter of fact, was in excellent form throughout the whole performance...
...real nonhumorous success was a dramatic pastiche from A Tale of Two Cities. Even much of the humor was secondbest. Williams did score a bull's-eye with a minor yarn, Mr. Chops. If a showman as gifted as Emlyn Williams ever goes to work on the great comic figures in Dickens -Pecksniff, Micawber, Sairey Gamp, Mrs. Jellyby, the Wellers-he should achieve a truly topnotch show...
...Comic Charlie Chester, who describes himself as a "British Milton Berle, only with a heart," is the man who was persuasive enough to sell sobersided BBC on doing the show. His only regret: that BBC is still too finicky to let him use announcers who will lose their pants during warmup time. Still breathless over its daring, BBC is also keeping a cautious eye on the show's budget. Warned a spokesman: "The gifts will be strictly limited in cost - no big-money American stuff here. We don't want to buy viewers." There seemed little danger. Groused...
...best, no comic strip was more whimsically humorous than Crockett Johnson's Barnaby. The world of five-year-old Barnaby was peopled by such characters as McSnoyd, an invisible leprechaun who talked with a Bronx accent, Gorgon, a talking dog, Gus, a friendly ghost, and a rotund, urbane fairy godfather named J. J. O'Malley. O'Malley's cigar doubled as a magic wand and usually kept him and Barnaby at odds with the slow-witted real world around them...