Word: humor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...things rescue Touch from the usual family conflict study. One is its humor; the other, some exceptionally good characterizations which are performed extremely well. The humor is apparent even from the opening of the play when the downstairs toilet is reported out of commission. When Ruth complains about her bladder, fixit husband Jack suggests a milk bottle and retorts, "Learn to aim. I have." But after a great deal of water sloshing in buckets the crisis is resolved. Characterizations are often achieved through a single line. When Ruth speaks of herself as cultered she says, "Red wine with meat...
Joel Schwartz's last play, Mine Eyes See Not So Far, was a long tortuous examination of single character heightened by a fantasy play-within-a-play. His latest offering, Touch, takes on a whole family with much of the same dramatist's skill, more humor, but unfortunately less discipline. Despite Eyes' inordinate length, the various parts were pulled together in a complex web; in Touch there are scenes which are merely extraneous and sometimes distracting from the main action of the play. This state of affairs is doubly frustrating since parts of Touch are not merely good, but excellent...
Steinberg's wry humor may also be a mask. In the past ten years his drawings have taken a cerebral and sometimes sobering turn. Doubt and anguish are registered by a tiny figure poised atop an enormous question mark, which is itself hovering on the edge of an abyss. Brave but hapless little Indians combat a great American sphinx...
...contemplative Americans, Years of Lightning offers little more than an idealized shadow of the real J.F.K., a monochromatic coin likeness. His resilience, his zest for tough political infighting, his wild Irish humor are scarcely touched upon at all. His weaknesses are ignored or glossed over so swiftly and uncritically that the Bay of Pigs "setback" seems a mere preliminary bout for the Administration's sword's-point showdown over the dismantling of Soviet missile sites in Cuba. "There were those who disagreed with the President," says Peck. But they obviously don't matter very much...
...early. Never having worn his cynicism with detachment, his last-act confession of feeling has to border on the maudlin to have any effect. But his drunken recounting of the night at the whorehouse, along with Sheila Hart's portrayal of the servant girl, are the only moments of humor in the play which came across successfully. Nagin and Seltzer seem to feel reticent and slightly guilty when O'Neill gives them anything funny...