Word: comics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...most difficult circumstances. The role of Winnie is enormously difficult, but Hamlin carries it off with extraordinary finesse. Still, Hamlin's rendition of Winnie's lines comes in a rather sing-songey fashion, and this only detracts from the seriousness of the character. Winnie, though partially a comic personage, is no buffoon and her plight deserves more sympathy than this production gives...
Happy Days is a play with much comic potential, and for the most part Hamlin and Hamlin realize the play's essential comic value. Beckett, who was 54 when he wrote the script, also has some valuable things to say about the terror of aging, and the Loeb production makes these statements for Beckett with great eloquence...
...Summer Repertory took on considerable risks when it decided to give Happy Days a go; despite some fine comic and theatrical moments, the risks just didn't play off. Beckett's play, intellectually difficult as well as theatrically so, must work as a philosophical exposition on the human spirit in a hostile world if it is to work at all. For that to happen the acting must be especially sympathetic and the play's principals must have a thorough grasp on the deep conflicts that come to the fore. That the Loeb's production is not a total success...
...play is saved from being overly grave and melodramatic by Horowitz's fine ear for both the poetic and comic rhythms of natural speech. His characters speak that elliptical language made familiar by Pinter--a series of monologues that only rarely intersect, made up of short-circuited sentences, non-sequiturs and repetitions. The special idiom of the absurdist play demands from its actors a particular sensitivity to the purely aural qualities of speech as well as split-second timing and O'Brien never lets his cast miss a beat...
...exhibit now under consideration represents something of a curiosity: a rip-off of a ripoff. It will be remembered that the original cartoon feature Fritz the Cat - largely the work of the animator Ralph Bakshi - so enraged Fritz's creator, the underground comic artist R. Crumb, that he disowned the whole movie. Crumb, a stringent satirist, had conjured up Fritz as a way to mock the poses of the pseudo hipster and to lay waste the giddy excess of the culture from which he sprang. Bakshi slicked Fritz up, cooled him out, and turned him into the perfect creature...