Word: foil
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Beside the two other principals, Nucci is disappointing as Iago. His voice doesn't seem to provide the kind of deeply treacherous character that the role demands, and, in duets with Pavarotti's passionate warrior, Nucci comes across as an insipid foil rather than a calculating fiend. The tremendous aria Credo in un Dio crudel is unspectacular, and the orchestra actually unseats Nucci in places with its impressive rendering of Verdi's meticulously detailed score. Anthony Rolfe Johnson provides a beautiful Cassio, whose innocent virtue is not equalled by Nucci's sinister duplicity...
...slick, womanizing Rob Lowe is, of course, the perfect foil for the abundantly earthy and clueless Wayne and Garth...
...presidential race; they are irresistibly driven to impose some sort of structure on the most shapeless contest. Last year many were looking for someone to cast as the principal rival to presumed front-runner Mario Cuomo. They came up with Clinton partly because he seemed the perfect foil to a Northern Big Government liberal: a Southerner who took many moderate stands -- on education and welfare reform, for example -- and talked constantly about the "responsibility" of people who receive government benefits to do something in return...
...valet-parked at trendy sports clubs and smoking ranks higher on the list of social no-no's than drowning kittens. It is where Tony Roberts, portraying a Broadway actor who finds success in Los Angeles in the movie Annie Hall, explains that he has encased himself in a foil-like eternal-youth suit because it "keeps out the alpha rays . . . You don't get old." It is the place where cruciferous vegetables were first worshiped. As the millennium draws near, a refurbished Muscle Beach stands as a clogged monument to the mesomorphic, hikers and bikers create traffic jams...
...also designs houses and furniture, makes the set and props an integral part of The Sweating Door Alarm. For example, the gray wall which serves as a backdrop is used to the fullest. Initially a wall of TV screens, it is transformed into a starry sky, covered in tin foil and used as an elevator. This set does not overwhelm the audience, but coaxes them into believing...