Word: comically
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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PROMISES, PROMISES follows all the hallowed tactics for promoting mediocrity into success. Jerry Orbach is splendid as the tall, gangling antihero, and Marian Mercer turns in the acting gem of the evening as an amorous alcoholic pickup. But the comic tone of Neil Simon's book is bland rather than pithy, and most of the songs of the Burt Bacharach score are interchangeably tuneless...
While the girl was still in the sound-proof booth, Dowling was identified as "the hero of his college newspaper's comic strip." Champi, who threw all the passes for 16 points to tie Yale in the last 42 seconds, was later identified as being also a writer of poetry...
Along the way, Rachel falls in with a crooked straight man (Jason Robards) and a doleful comic (Norman Wisdom). The casting could not be bettered., Robards' crumpled countenance and larcenous glint make him the quintessential backstage villain. Wisdom, long a British stage star, recalls Keaton in his split-second spills and deadpan pantomime...
When Brecht's own Berliner Ensemble performs the play, the discipline and virtuosity of the company turn a somewhat silly drama into a comic nightmare. European experience underlines every speech with blood. But Americans tend to regard gangsters with nostalgic indulgence as individualistic resistance fighters against society (witness the vast popularity of Bonnie and Clyde). In the U.S., the play takes on the eerie quality of a faintly sinister success story, in which an immigrant boy from Brooklyn overcomes his bad accent and deplorable manners to achieve dominion and power over the second largest city in the nation...
Tamara Long, as the slinky heavy, brandishes a flaming Morganitic torch for her Mister Man, and Sally Stark, as Ruby's peroxided pal, belts a note almost as plangent as the great Merman's. The comic delight of the show, though, is Bernadette Peters, whose Ruby can simultaneously sing and dance up a storm that puts all New York (including Queen Mane of Rumania) at her feet. She can also lament her unrequited love with a tear that streaks mascara down her cheek in a lugubrious perfection of timing...