Word: commoner
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Bender's offspring are in their ways almost as unhelpful as these strangers. Her daughter Valerie (Heather Tobias, in the movie's only overwrought, misjudged performance) can buy everything but common sense and fills life's emptiness with a riot of ugly possessions. Her son Cyril (Philip Davis) has gone the opposite route. He is a leftover leftist who cannot abandon the habit of Marxist analysis but is unable to believe any longer in its power to effect change...
...City Councilman Sam Pennisi, proudly points to a sewage pipe spewing dark water into the bay. "This," he tells a visitor, "is what home-rule democracy is ! all about!" Hold on, Sam. Mixing sewage and wildlife, then bragging about it in the name of democracy, doesn't sound like common sense. But Arcata (pop. 14,600), a timber and fishing town in Northern California populated by a curious mix of rural curmudgeons, refugees from suburbia, and college students, often thinks differently about things. Pennisi and his companions, Humboldt State University professor George Allen and HSU environmental engineer Robert Gearheart...
...help the audience wade through the play's thicket of historical references is The Common Man. Part Greek Chorus, part Johnny Carson, The Common Man (Elliot Thomson) not only appears in every other scene but also has some of the best lines in the play. Donning the guise of a dozen different rogues, Thomson acts in true Rodney Dangerfield fashion, claiming he doesn't get any respect as the resident commoner. Thomson, however, has no problems gaining the audience's respect. With his sassy sarcasm and bemused wit he has the audience at his feet...
Juniors Tod Hartje and Dan Murphy, sophomore Ross Cockerall and freshmen Bill Boone, Dave Miller and Dennis Crowley combine to form a pool of golf talent with a common interest--P.T., as in playing time...
...contrast, debate within the council has been characterized by respect for all positions and a common understanding that persons on both sides of the issue are motivated by a sincere desire to do what is best for Harvard. Palmore offers no more than a "straw-man" representation of the two simplest arguments against the referendum...