Word: dialectic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that Broadway took to its heart in 1921. Unhappily, in fact, it is not really a show at all. A ragged World War II yarn about a lively WAC widow whose husband turns out not to be dead, it shambles and stumbles along in the choking dust of old dialect gags, while the music and dancing seem to prolong the agony rather than interrupt it. From the old days, Shuffle Along has wisely retained I'm Just Wild About Harry and Love Will Find a Way, and two or three of the new tunes are pleasant enough...
Whatever her effect on the cast, Miss Channing does nothing to either the songs or scenery except improve them. With wiggling hips and dumb blonde's dialect, she creates a captivating Lorelei Lee in A Little Girl From Arkansas and Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend. But only the expectation that Miss Channing will return supports the two-thirds of the show which grinds on without...
...only other good performance besides Hull, is given by Richard Waring. But he is miscast. His English-trained voice is unable to grapple with American dialect and he gives the impression of a frustrated Shakespearean player...
More important, Albotell has not been able to teach his characters to speak their Ozark dialect with Ozark accents. Perhaps most of the blame lies with the lines which just don't belong in hillbilly mouths...
...Neill brought his brooding, unflinching sense of the dark mass of things, but not the art - or even the articulateness-to give it genuine shape. Desire emerges as neither realistic drama nor poetic tragedy, but as something clumsily in between. Most of the writing, in a rather stylized dialect as factitious as it is folksy, lacks reverberation. Hence, too much of the action has the quality of mere clodhopper melodrama. The last act is dramatically effective; but the last act, reaching up to the redemptive power of love, should be tragically exalted...