Word: comicly
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...very large number of people to do something extraordinary. It was never a "no brainer" piece of pop entertainment. Unlike most of the other big productions of the year, it is neither a sequel nor the launching point of a series of sequels. It is not based on a comic book. It was not designed to spawn a vast array of toys, merchandising, video games and theme-park attractions. It is an earnest and heartfelt work. But the same voices that decry the formulaic commercialism of mainstream Hollywood product do not seem to applaud the studio heads...
What's more, it is oddly similar to a very different playwright's latest failure. Neil Simon's Proposals--the comic kingpin's first Broadway effort since Laughter on the 23rd Floor in 1993--is, like The Old Neighborhood, a memory play that doesn't add up to much. Guided by the family's (now dead) housekeeper, we are taken back to the Poconos in the 1950s, on a summer weekend when several characters encounter a new love or are reunited with an old one. It would be nice to describe this as a flimsy pretext for a batch...
...comic moves away from those influences as it progresses; in fact, the "Scud" universe is now large enough to have generated two spin-offs. Almost as violent and twice as profane as "Scud" is "La Cosa Nostroid." Illustrated by one Edvis (whose goofy, facile style is as reminiscent of Phil Foglio as it is of Schrab), the book somehow manages to make immature, violent, half-cyborg mafiosi extraordinarily lovable. And Scud's silent sidekick Drywall--a little creature whose zippered skin leads into a infinitely large inner warehouse where he can store anything he needs--has for some reason become...
...attitude. Scud himself realizes this in one of his profounder moments. Meditating that he's one robot protagonist who's never wanted to be a human being, he comes to the conclusion that he should enjoy being what he is. Summing up the central aesthetic of the comic, Scud proclaims, "It's cool to be a robot...
Unmatched in the entire production, however, is the delicious comic relief found between Kadmos (Alvin Epstein) and Tiresias (Will LeBow) at the start of the play. One cannot help but love the funny old men as they prepare to dance in the mountains near the Bacchae, particularly Kadmos in his dress straight out of "Prom Night Horror." When they have to, however, both can instantly become powerful leaders on the brink of destruction. LeBow's Tiresias sends chills through the audience with his dark fore-shadowings to the giggling Maenads. Likewise, the perpetually-talented Epstein manages to make his bitter...