Word: dictional
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...faulted for following these instructions; just quite the opposite, both strain to play up the many truly funny lines. But for the most part, their Odd Couple is more Camus and Sartre than Laurel and Hardy, blankly meditating on life's emptiness. Both are skilled actors, with exceptional diction, and their interplay is the highlight of this production. Their comprehension of the interchangeable nature of their roles seeps through each line: Vladimir speaks in verse, though Estragon is the poet. McCue and Redford mimic so subtlely that only during the second act do we notice that they mirror each other...
...idea. It had no content beyond the "view" ("Monet is only an eye," Cezanne said, "but good God, what an eye!"), no governing system of imagery, no symbols. To younger artists, it therefore seemed lax and unambitious. They wanted to return painting to a more demanding kind of diction ?exemplary and grand, like the art of the museums. All manner of stylistic sources fed into their project: the abstracted allegories of Puvis de Chavannes, for instance, gave some cues to Gauguin, as did the formal outlining of Japanese cloisonne enamel: that bluish bounding line was the diametric opposite...
Roth gets it just right: the cadences and diction of the provincial and the pretentious, the fresh edge of Nathan's ambition, his helpless rage and the confusion of his victims. Zuckerman will do anything for a good line. He imagines going home with news for his mother. "I met a marvelous young woman while I was up in New England. I love her and she loves me. We are going to be married." "Married? But so fast? Nathan, is she Jewish?" "Yes, she is." "But who is she?" "Anne Frank...
...natural choice. At 50, Wiesel has the bearing and diction of an Old Testament prophet. His books and many articles are scrolls of agony, depicting as pects of the Jewish tragedy of the '30s and '40s that, in his view, "blighted and still blights civilization...
...about the stage, whipping out their lines, each section of the audience gets to hear a few words, but no one hears the entire sentence. While this mayhem may be intended to suggest the decline of human sensitivity and individualism, it succeeds only in depicting the decline of good diction...