Word: humorousness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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James Lardner's direction is unobtrusive but effective. Aside from some really sorry smaller parts (and the fact that no one in the cast quite knows his lines yet), Lardner has made each character a distinct one--a must if half the humor is not to be lost. The set, conceived by Howard Cutler and built by Mark Page, is attractive and simple, perfectly suited to the limitations of a dining hall theatre...
Abortive Assault. When the main force arrived, its good humor had begun to fray. An assault squad wielding clubs and ax handles probed the rope barriers in front of the Pentagon entrances, taunting and testing white-hatted federal marshals who stood in close ranks along the line. After 90-odd minutes of steadily rising invective and roiling around in the north parking lot of the Pentagon, flying wedges of demonstrators surged toward the less heavily defended press entrance...
...college coach whose team has to play Texas, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Washington and U.C.L.A. in one season had better have a sense of humor. Southern California's John McKay, 44, is quick with a quip. Ask McKay whether he thinks emotion is important in football, and he says: "My wife is emotional, but she's a very poor football player." Compliment John on the fact that his Trojans are the No. 1-ranked team in the U.S., and he shrugs...
...opening act is meant to establish the idioms and manners of Eastern European Jewish life: it succeeds only in making audience and cast uncomfortable. The three batlonim, those parable-telling lay-abouts of Yiddish humor, act as though they were unrepentant members of the Gas House Gang. Timothy Hall offends especially, and all about him actors are moving too slowly and having great trouble with the foreign-sounding words. Only Howard Cutler, as Khonnon, the young student whose anguished soul is the dybbuk of the title, and Mark Ritts, as the prophetic messenger, carry off their parts. Both have voices...
...Stage humor is in transition. The old humor of the gag and the wise crack was confident, benign, a pick-me-up rather than a putdown. The new humor, which draws its tone from play wrights such as Albee and Pinter, is cruel, taut-nerved, and speaks the lingo of the obscene and the absurd, not funny-ha-ha but funny-peculiar. The new humor reigns in off-Broadway's Scuba Duba, a flagellatingly funny first play by Novelist Bruce Jay Friedman (Stern, A Mother's Kisses...