Word: comical
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When we think of George Bernard Shaw, the first qualities that come to mind are a brilliant comic gift and an incisive, yet essentially kindly eye for social satire. It is sometimes difficult to remember that the playwright was also a serious thinker with serious, if now some what outmoded, philosophical ideas that he incorporated in many of his major plays. In this vein, a particularly successful fusion of comedy and philosophy is "Man and Superman," now enjoying a lively and stylish presentation at the American Repertory Theatre...
...rest of the cast is as solid as one might expect from the ART. Some of the actors choose to exaggerate the comic tendencies of their characters: Ripley turns the incurable romantic, "Ricky-Ticky-Tavy" Octavius into a singing, simpering, sentimental fool; Jack Willis, in a minor satiric role as an American industrialist buying his way into ancient English titles and estates, makes a caricature of himself with his loud, hearty declamations and zestful crudeness of manner. Geidt lacks Mephistophelian finesse as both Mendoza and Satan, but is nicely balanced by Epstein who is superb as the stiffly and stuffily...
...scene. Not that the actors and director David Wheeler don't have a damn good try at making it work. The debaters deliver their arguments with conviction and fluency, and the director attempts to break up the essential monotony of a dialectic discussion through physical movement and some pleasant comic touches: Mendoza's four brigands become four devils, horns and all, who periodically cross the stage with admirably solemn expressions, replenishing drinks and once bearing a crucifix that is passed around like a specimen "on view...
Vaughn, 27, has a sleekly handsome face and a disarming onscreen presence: he seems to be reveling in and making sport of his good looks at the same time. In Swingers he showed off a jazzy sense of comic timing, but through all the ridiculousness Vaughn has a gently ingratiating way of making us care about his character...
...M?rquez makes the fantastic seem ordinary. At one point Marina Montoya asks her cold-blooded keepers to kneel with her and pray. They do, each to the same God for the same reasons: to protect their lives and deliver them from evil. It is a classic Garc?a M?rquez instance -- comic, tragic and all too human...