Word: humorously
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...character parts, the aunts Charlotte and Albertine and sisters Denise and Monique, come as close as they can to stealing the show. Nora Seton and Lisa Beach as the cat-fighting old biddies successfully carry off the humor and hopelessness combined in their roles. Elise O'Shaughnessy gets a few good laughs out of her character, drooling alternately for mince pies and her brother and ultimately confusing the two. Amy Gutman delivers a frighteningly taut performance as the paranoid addict, Monique. In her long speeches the ragged nerves almost show in the lights...
...mother--played by an actress the same age as Grant--he gets caught up in international espionage plots. The real guts of the film are its several amazing set-pieces: the whirlwind opening, in which Grant gets whipped into the spy stuff before he can look askance; a black-humor elevator scene, with Grant at gunpoint as his mother pecks over his captors, "You men wouldn't be trying to kill my son, now would you?" ha-ha; the famous crop-duster scene in which a biplane machine-guns Grant; one scene in which Grant sneaks into an auction...
...acting ranges from flashes of humor to painful awkwardness. Elizabeth McNary, as evil high priestess Slipreewenwhet, delivers some glorious Mae Westian asides. LeRoy W. Collins has a flair for outrageousness, but is miscast as the lecherous Pharoah, Seqentunun. Jim Tung, as Inkitin the scribe, Clare McGorrian as Eforeti the Queen, Mary Demerest as an anachronistic Brooklyn servant, and Michael Cohen as the thief Ali Katz, all have moments, but something doesn't gel. Cohen, especially, shows raw talent, but lacks experienced directorial guidance to help him bring his Peter Lorre persona off. Dede Schmeiser also shows potential as Rosetta Stone...
playwrights together is a spontaneous and frequently ribald sense of humor, a robust zest for life and, in emotional terms, the quality F. Scott Fitzgerald called "a willingness of the heart." The ardent workers and supporters of Louisville's Actors Theater certainly share that willingness...
WELCOME AS THEY ARE, these funny moments make the play's mood inconsistent. Because Simon is re-creating, even exorcising, a personal anguish, he fails to balance pathos and humor as skillfully as he might have. In the second act, when the marriage begins to show signs of strain, an affair between Leo and Faye abruptly surfaces in an obvious attempt to give the play a little comic relief. This humorous interlude begins promisingly: Leo's attempts to calm the skittish Faye and disentangle her from a toga-style bed-sheet provide the most hysterical moments in Chapter...