Word: comics
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...parody lies in brevity. The trick is to catch and tickle to death a form's conventions and hastily flee the scene. In a very few minutes any reasonably clever group of comic writers and players can exhaust the rather limited parodistic possibilities inherent in the soaps. Then the problem is what to do next. The only answer, of course, is to do exactly what the soaps do - give the characters some issues to turn over and over in their tiny minds. There is a mass murder down the block, the grandpa who is discovered to be a flasher...
PAPAGENO the bird-catcher was clearly Bergman's favorite character, and his comic part has been so embellished that he could almost be taken for the drama's protagonist. His innocent lust for talk, food, sex, and a wife get him into all kinds of trouble; all he really wants is a woman, and he often gazes warmly into the audience, begging someone out there to be his mate and threatening suicide when no one complies. As Taminos's companion he is given a chance to endure the Trials, but he has neither the courage nor the reticence to keep...
...little girl who by some odd coincidence looks a lot like Liv Ullman and a touch like Bergman himself. Between acts his camera wanders around backstage, where Sarastro reads the score to Wagner's Parsifal, the Queen of the Night drags grimly on a cigarette, a court page reads comic books, and the two lovers play checkers in a coy parody of The Seventh Seal...
...Hoffman floating at the bottom of his parents' swimming pool in his brand new scuba outfit contemplating the absurdity of life. Or something like that. The ending is straight out of storybook land, but with Simon and Garfunkel singing, Hoffman and Bancroft acting and one of the better comic scripts around. Plastics...
...Polish Mime Ballet. A celebrated European company performs the comic mime The Menagerie of the Empress Phylissa, which combines ballet, mime theatre and gymnastics. One of the Loeb's special season presentations. Performances January 15 and 16 at 8 p.m. January 17 at 5 and 9 p.m., January 18 at 2:30 and 8 p.m. Rush seats...