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Word: comics (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
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Usage:

Since faith in our age must be entertaining, it wears in Godspell all the trappings of musical farce, with the comic acting-out of Christian parables alternating with a lively rock and gospel-inspired score. The resultant blend is hardly the ultimate in sophistication--in this version of the Christian myth, the plot is stylized and the characterizations, save for Jesus, nearly non-existent...

Author: By Julia M. Klein, | Title: Dixie Cups and Disciples | 3/18/1976 | See Source »

...main problem with the book of Godspell is that the New Testament parables, linked though they are to the archetypal comic myth, are not themselves intrinsically funny. To convert dogma into entertainment, it's up to the director to make them so. Embellishing the original script with a few Harvard touches, Manulis marches his cast through a series of mimes, impressions and slapstick sequences in a laudable effort to compensate for the thinness of the material...

Author: By Julia M. Klein, | Title: Dixie Cups and Disciples | 3/18/1976 | See Source »

While Stephen Hayes plays Jesus with straight-faced gentleness (aside from a few Groucho Marx imitations), other members of the ensemble excel at comic vignettes. Mary Soloschin is very funny as a frenetic old miser who heaps up his wealth in storehouses, Michael der Manuelian captures in excruciating grimaces the plight of a parched seed, and Don Marocchio's impersonation of our former president is painfully accurate. Manulis' directorial coup, however, is his dramatization of the parable of the prodigal son, which features strippers enticing the prodigal to the strains of "Hey, Big Spender" and the amazing vocal contortions...

Author: By Julia M. Klein, | Title: Dixie Cups and Disciples | 3/18/1976 | See Source »

...addition to making the parables funny without sacrificing their fundamental seriousness, any production of Godspell must aim for a balance between an overall comic mood and the menacing undertones which dominate the second act. Here too Manulis, with the help of sometimes overly dramatic lighting, is generally successful. It takes a while for the troupe to establish the ominous mood foreshadowing the crucifixion, but by the time Jesus hangs on the cross--in this case, the junkyard fence--the tone is appropriately somber...

Author: By Julia M. Klein, | Title: Dixie Cups and Disciples | 3/18/1976 | See Source »

...Ginger Man, though essentially comic in tone, possesses a real undercurrent of melancholy, a curious gaelic sentimentality, which always qualifies the humor Dangerfield's existence is stifled; all he wants is "ease and comfort and quiet," but that is denied him throughout his rakish wanderings and loveless manipulations of others. As he becomes more and more desirous of this unfettered contentment, he is increasingly desperate and pressed to make ends meet. Ultimately he begins to see the folly and waste of this pursuit, and is saved from financial desperation by the improbable intercession of a wealthy friend...

Author: By Christopher Agee, | Title: Making It | 3/18/1976 | See Source »

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