Word: deja
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Unfortunately, this Bernstein is rather deja vu, especially since almost all the songs in the "Revue" were performed in An Evening with Comden and Green, which had two runs at the Loeb earlier this year. An Evening of Bernstein passes over the contributions of his two collaborators, putting an unjust emphasis on Bernstein's lyric-writing genius. On the whole, this Evening at the Agassiz suffers from the inevitable comparison with Comden and Green. The two professionals knew how to put songs and patter together in a continuum; they had the ability to make the most rehearsed gesture appear spontaneous...
...those who undergo a heavy siege of deja vu while watching the show, the problem may be that they have seen The Proposition some time in the memorable past. The whole cast began working together as Proposition people, but left in 1974 over an employment dispute, packing in their bags the best lines, routines, and jokes. They built their own new playhouse, reworded the show name, and if they package their wares intelligently, could become formidable competition for the troupe that started improvisational theater in Boston earlier this decade...
Instantly one is reminded of Fail Safe, Seven Days in May and various other pop-cult expressions of former doomsday fears. This sense of deja vu is enhanced by the casting of that archetypal movie star of the '50s, Burt Lancaster, as the leading trespasser on Government property. His SAC nemesis is Richard Widmark, still energizing his performances with a subtle suggestion of psychopathy. Playing the President's closest advisers are such good, gray actors as Melvyn Douglas, Joseph Gotten and Leif Erickson. It is all rather comforting to see these old companions in adventure from bygone matinees...
...issues leaves one with the suspicion that Mollenhoff enjoys pulling old columns from his scrapbook every so often in search of a good quote. The pace slackens especially during the last third of the narrative, where the morass of Watergate-related comings and goings leaves the reader with a "deja vu" feeling; a wish to escape from yet another version of the intrigues he has encountered many times before. The book might have benefited from less reliance on the temporal sequence of events and greater emphasis on specific incidents to illustrate the author's thesis...
...like a lynx and pouting like the original hermaphrodite had lost a good deal of its original charm, and the seemingly perpetual tours of all the possible combinations and permutations of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young began to evoke, just like they said in their song, a feeling of deja...