Word: comical
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...been the Jesuits': Give me a child before he's seven, and he will be mine for life. Once this shaman-showman had seized kids' minds, he could raid their piggy banks. And on that mountain of pennies he could build an empire. His cartoons and feature films sired comic books, toys, hit songs (Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?, When You Wish upon a Star, Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah) and the ubiquitous Mickey Mouse watch. While other moguls ground out 40 or 50 pictures a year, then consigned them to rot in the vaults, Disney made...
...another rehashing of a really old (I mean really old) theme. Right after breaking up with his girlfriend (Eliza Rosenbluth), Zoole captures hapless burglar Vito Antonucci (David Condon) as the latter tries to escape from his apartment. Zoole ties him to the kitchen counter and inflicts a variety of comic insults upon him. They spend most of the play talking, and in the process they find out about themselves and each other, share touching and comic moments...
Despite the flaws, P.S. Your Cat is Dead comes out well. O'Keefe and Condon make a good comic duo, projecting a lot of humor through a mediocre script. They wring sympathy out of moments that could be unbearably hokey. What it boils down to is, do you want surprises or do you want fun? Dead cats...
Roberts even picks up on Picnic's comic elements, though not as well as Marjorie Ingall, who plays the middle-aged next door neighbor. In a play where the word "costume" means jeans or a flower-patterned dress, it should not be surprising that the audience can almost see the powder falling from her grey hair. Though after working with this cast, one might expect her hair to fall...
Nothing in this scene overtly suggests the imminence of comic catastrophe. But experienced readers of Thomas Berger will immediately put on their crash helmets and fasten the safety belts. Newcomers are advised to follow suit. The Houseguest, Berger's 15th novel, picks up some of the pieces scattered by the explosive anarchy of his Neighbors (1980). Once again, an apparently stable domestic setting warps and buckles into chaos, and kindred characters struggle to adjust to a world in which the outrageous has suddenly become the norm...