Word: humorously
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Pentagon they call it the "Bay of Rugs." The humor is a little weak, but the point is valid. Just as the Bay of Pigs in 1961 sobered John Kennedy's Government, so has the Iranian crisis shocked today's Washington into a new sense of reality...
...remember Woody Allen jokes. Because Monty Python, like anything surrealistic, depends on the realism it parodies; it takes not of the world outside and (ab)uses it. Whereas Woody operates in a vacuum, surrounding himself with flimsy satirical types who recur in each film he makes, and his humor vanishes once his personality isn't on screen...
...satirical scenes, timing his funniest lines well, and delivering them in a booming baritone that reverbrates about the small theatre. He wears a sardonic frown that embodies his contempt for the culture he lives in. But he acts out his irrational moments less convincingly. The abrupt transition from penthouse humor to breakdown is ungraceful because he tries to express his disorder by physical rampaging rather than verbal interpretation. And the baritone he exploited earlier is over-exercised; like the play's belaboring of psychosis, it soon wears thin...
...onus, then, falls back on the playwright. Commendably, Guare is trying to extend himself. Secure in middle class New York humor, he's reaching for what lies behind it, for what it can evolve into when nurtured by sensitivity and misfortune. He has tried to blend intelligent humor with an Albee-like vision of psychological deterioration and disorientation. Unfortunately, this exceeds his grasp...
...Humor, James Thurber observed, "is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity." That at least seems to be the governing philosophy behind many of the cartoons in this year's collections. The best in this vein is Gahan Wilson's gently crafted Nuts (Marek; unpaginated; $4.95), chronicles of growing up. "You who remember how great it was to be a little kid, gang, don't remember how it was to be a little kid," warns Wilson, whose intrepid, chunky comic -strip hero survives a series of boyhood crises. Pilgrim's Regress, edited by Joel Wells (Thomas More Press...