Word: comics
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...father-fixation is so unshakable that he agrees to be the nominal husband of a girl whom Mr. Crispin wants to torture. An impulsive young Englishman who loves her, plots to rescue her from the Crispin home. He is aided by an ineffectual young American (who supplies the only comic relief by frequent, skillful references to Baker, Oregon, "a place in America," where he has two sisters, Hetty and Jane, "good girls"). Apprehended, the Englishman is bound by the wrists, his back is used as an etching-plate, upon which Mr. Crispin cuts with a surgical scalpel the likeness...
...fact, "Ladder" is nothing if not at odds with existing theatrical policy. It is the artistic contrast, the comic relief if you will, for the drama as a whole. It is the attempt par excellence to give the public not what it wants but what in the mind of an individual it ought to have. Art theatres and experimental playhouses the nation over can only envy the financial resources that makes its existence possible and contemplate the splendid uses to which they could put an equal amount of money. Theatre goers in general may applaud the quiet determination...
Girl Trouble concerns a shy youth who loves one girl, is pursued by another, loved by a third, and tormented by his relatives. With a disturbing lack of comic inspiration, the play proceeds until the right girl wins...
Quite by chance librettist and musician were brought together to do a curtain-raiser. An astute and sporting manager, D'Oyly Carte, saw the possibilities, launched the inimitable comic operas which have been wide favorites these 50 years?H. M. S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzancc, Patience, lolanthe, The Mikado, Ruddigore. But it was also D'Oyly Carte who charged the famous £140 carpet to The Gondoliers, thereby traditionally starting the passionate if intermittent quarrel between the gifted collaborators. Gilbert objected to the extravagance, and flew into a rage because Sullivan refused to join in the objection...
...cherished the ambition to do something more dignified, more pretentious, more "worthy" of his musical ability. Already he had demanded that Gilbert write something more substantial "without the supernatural and improbable;" Gilbert had bridled, rued, agreed to. capitulate, then blithely written?The Mikado! Superbly Sullivan matched improbable for improbable, comic for comic, and suspected miserably that he was belittling...