Word: cullum
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Green have followed the plot line of the famed 1934 screwball-comedy film, but that line now seems monorail thin. Lacking inspired lunacy, Director Harold Prince has taken refuge in camp and stylistic cartoonery. As Oscar Jaffee, the flamboyant theatrical producer who is down on his mendacious luck, John Cullum looks and cavorts rather like a Barrymore run off by a slightly defective duplicating machine. To make a comeback, he must sign Lily Garland, the woman he catapulted to stardom, to a stage contract. In that role, Madeline Kahn displays an arsenal of talents. She is kooky, vulnerable and seductive...
Despite an occasional scene that flares up with emotional violence and pain, The Trip Back Down is a play sadly lacking in astonishment. It repeats itself, it is predictable, and it is a soapy, sentimental bore. Bobby Horvath (John Cullum) is a middle-aging stock-car racer whose psyche is skidding on a wet track. His earlier dreams of flashing under the wire first in the Indianapolis 500 have now become the wearying nightmares of a perpetual loser. He has come home to Mansfield, Ohio, to recoup his losses, possibly by never racing again, but at least by making peace...
...Other winners: Best Play, Equus; Best Director of a Play, John Dexter (Equus); Best Actors and Actress in Plays, John Kani and Winston Ntshona (Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island), and Ellen Burstyn (Same Time, Next Year); Best Actor and Actress in Musicals, John Cullum (Shenandoah) and Angela Lansbury (Gypsy...
...story, what there is of it, is lifted from a 1965 movie of the same name, which starred James Stewart. The action takes place during the Civil War. Charlie Anderson (John Cullum) is a widower who periodically communes with his dead wife in bathetic speeches directed disconcertingly at the floor boards. He is also a Virginia landowner with six sons who has no intention of letting them be drafted into the Confederate forces. He argues that war violates the will of God, which suggests that he reads his Bible selectively, ignoring such passages as Exodus 15:3, "The Lord...
Predictably, the sword sunders Charlie's pacifist haven. His youngest son is kidnaped by the Yankees; his eldest is murdered by the Confederates under the misconception that he is a Union soldier. Family scenes bordering on the mawkish abound, culminating in a sob-happy ending. Cullum holds the rambling show together with a strong stage presence and a robust baritone, but his general manner is a trifle too Broadway-slick for a hornyhanded farmer. Producers invariably say of a musical like this that it will find its audience, and much of Shenandoah is so amiably wholesome that one wishes...