Word: farceur
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Plautus novam fabulam dat." Wise woman. The old dramatic farceur manufactured situations that have kept audiences laughing for 23 centu ries. This is not news on New York's Via Magna Alba. Ten years ago, Burt Shevelove's and Larry Gelbart's free adaptation of Plautus' plays convulsed playgoers for 964 performances. At that time Zero Mostel pranced onstage like an elephant with a hotfoot in the star ring role of Pseudolus, a slave with a passion for freedom as avid as that of all 1 3 original colonies. He was gloriously funny, and in this...
...career, the only grief that British Playwright Joe Orton ever visited on anyone in the theater was his untimely death at the age of 34. Orton gleefully beat sacred cows on their way to the last roundup (Entertaining Mr. Shane; TIME, Oct. 22, 1965). He was a black-comedy farceur who could dance on a coffin and spit in the corpse's eye (Loot; TIME, March 29, 1968). It has been said that "a joke is a scream for help." In Orton's mouth, a joke was an urbane substitute for murder. He was a wild Wilde...
...military string ensemble pumped out the dansant tunes in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace as Master Farceur Noel Coward, 70, was dubbed a knight of the realm. In a simple, almost offhand ceremony, the entertainer knelt on a small stool and took a sword tap on each shoulder ("very lightly, thank goodness," he said later) from Queen Elizabeth II, who wore street clothes. "The Queen was absolutely charming," Coward told newsmen. "She always is. I've known her since she was a little girl." Then Sir Noel strolled off with a lady on each arm, wearing a rakishly tilted...