Word: droll
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...other hand, Shaw was not quite capable of creating a wise fool as captivatingly human as Sganarelle. John McMartin plays this role to droll perfection, both physically and psychologically. His face and his body operate on alternating currents as he is by turns appalled, amazed and fascinated by Don Juan's behavior. As the Don, Paul Hecht is the compleat cynic and as seductive as the hell he courts...
...bolstered with some particularly perceptive reporting. The Post's Haynes Johnson, for example, had the best explanation of McGovern's South Carolina strategy. New York Times readers got their expected ration of comprehensive journalism. Column after column catalogued the convention in infinite detail-even to an uncharacteristically droll bit by Robert Semple on the confrontation between a Secret Service bent on X-raying delegates' boxes of fried chicken for possible bombs and a Department of Public Health fearful that X rays would damage both dinner and diner...
TIME Critic Kalem's condescending review of Miss Bergman's deliciously droll performance as Lady Cicely Waynflete in Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion inadvertently provides a fine evaluation of Kalem himself-a D-minus critic writing for a C-plus magazine...
...last part of the book returns to England and in a way to A Cab at the Door. Pritchett's blustering father and droll mother come onstage for a final turn, somewhat better off financially but still squabbling, buying and selling inappropriate property, defying the blitz by moving into London. Both died in their 80s after the war. Probably out of modesty, he sketches his later life very lightly, discussing his novels and short stories briefly and barely mentioning both his career as critic for the New Statesman and the major study of Balzac he has worked...
...concluding section is a droll qualification of the first two. It contains the text of the psychiatrist's report on the case--an exploration of the problem of "schizoid monomamania" which not only undermines the credibility of the foregoing account, but leaves in doubt the very existence of this mathematician Comrade V. A melange of philosophic sallies, this third part of the novel features essays on the history of the stoic movement and the creation cum Laung of an unreal universe in response to an insane environment. In a penetrating investigation of changing criterion of artistic excellence. Park perceptively notes...