Word: facials
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Part of the problem lies with the rash use of theater-in-the-round. Close audience proximity places harsh demands on the facial features of amateur actors; group scenes require complex and flawless stage directions in this circular space; lighting is made difficult; technical effects more intrusive. Virtually all of the play's striking visual moments--as when the rapacious soldier lurches bare-chested and vain from the bedroom of the Jew's fiance--would have been as effective on a conventional stage...
Even the most gifted actor would have trouble making Bitto's lines sound natural, and most of the members of the cast compound the problem with stilted delivery and mechanical facial expression. The characters often react to each other too soon--or worse, don't react...
...easy task. When he gets to "paralanguage"-the meanings resident in the ways words are voiced -Farb begins to belabor the obvious. Every lover knows that "I love you" is a vocal variable, to be interpreted by the vibrations. In his enthusiasm for "body language"-the things said by facial expressions, gestures, posture -Farb goes far beyond most scholars of the new linguistics. "Pupil performance," he proclaims, "does not depend so much upon a school's audio-visual equipment or new textbooks or enriching trips to museums as it does upon teachers whose body language communicates high expectations...
While Nixon looked trim and vigorous, considering his long year of personal ordeal, the pancake makeup did not conceal recently acquired facial lines. He perspired more freely than ever. In a classic slip of the tongue, he read a line about the need to replace "the discredited present welfare program" as the need to replace the "dis credited President," then corrected himself...
...film does have some funny scenes. Zero Mostel's characterization of a fastidious gentleman, slowly changing into a rhinoceros before our eyes, is wonderful. His extraordinary facial expressions and contortions transform him into a wild, snorting beast. He begins charging around his bedroom smashing furniture and eating plants. Unfortunately, though this transformation scene is funny, and Mostel is at his absurd best, the scene is just too long and gimmicky. O'Horgan's determination to make the play a conventional comedy ruins the scene. It's always fun to exploit Mostel's talent. But long comic scenes which rely...