Word: comically
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Menen once wrote, "God, human folly, and laughter. Since the first two pass our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third." Urbane Satirist Menen has siphoned laughter out of stuffy pukka sahibs (The Prevalence of Witches') and sacred Hindu myths (The Ramayana). Rarely has his comic touch been lighter or more impolite than in this current spoof on science...
...such a song as Scarlet Ribbons he may stand perfectly straight, his head and shoulders pinned by the spotlight, lips eloquently pursed. In Sinner's Prayer, his face contorts in anguish; in Mark Twain it breaks wide in gutty laughter. When he attacks Love, Love Alone, a comic number, he often throws his arms wide, pivots in an arc from the waist and wobbles his head to the rhythm while he delivers the calypso lyrics with an impudent grin...
...legend that elucidates one of life's darkest mysteries: how the human soul lies sunk in a deathlike trance until it is awakened by the heroic spirit. Yet as presented in this "herculean," $6,000,000 version, the myth is just crude continuity for a colossal comic strip, and the more boings and EEEEEEEKs the moviemaker can get into his story, the better he seems to like...
...words is Playboy's only great distinction, except perhaps for a quality of tough-spirited, oddly joyous compassion--which amounts largely to the same thing. The plotting is tenuous, and the characters while vivid and attractive do not take up permanent residence in the mind, as great comic characters do. The cast of the present revival is not much help. But the play has lived fifty years on its dancing words alone, and it is alive and lovely still...
Ludvig's Holberg's The Healing Spring is under the tutelage of Mr. Hancock again. He has laid unholy hands on it, which was a good idea, since it has one of those comic opera plots which are usually best left to Mozart or Rossini or the Comedie Francaise or oblivion. Mr. Hancock has moved it--by the scruff of the neck--to southern California, and changed the characters to modern types. None of these types is original. Most of them, oddly enough, are very funny. The hero is portrayed as the sort of healthy youth who hung around with...