Word: joke
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...would, after all, be unspeakably inexpensive. You laugh as you read this, I know, you say to yourself that of course this is impossible. The Bargain? The incarnation of an ideal? The one priceless but cheap item that all others have missed? This must be a joke. But no. The look in Namo's eye when we set out was one of fierce determination, and as he clutched his plastic money in his sweaty palm, he drooled ever so slightly...
...sure fire suggestion. Which is the same as last year's sure fire suggestion and the one the year before that: to wit, a sex manual. Now you may think these are prurient and dumb, or you might think they are useful. Either way, it makes a great joke under the tree...
...sells big, and you can choose from the new Steve Martin album--if you haven't bought it yet, what are you waiting for, it is even better (if that is possible) than his first album-the latest Richard "I-am-one-funny-nigger-God-damn-I-curse-and-joke-about-cocaine-and-shit" Pryor, and the soundtrack of Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke, a movie which should indeed have been put up in smoke before they got it into theaters and people started wasting their money...
corrective education disguised as comedy. Fiona French's timing is not exactly Henny Youngman's. and the practical joke that a nobleman plays on a sculptor is somewhat short of hilarious. But her illustrations make shrewd use of the quattrocento palette and the faces on old coins. If Dante had ever written a children's book, these are the paintings he would have wanted in the middle of the journey...
Beyond making themselves understood, however, some of the cast falter, unsure whether to play the operetta utterly deadpan--letting the audience laugh at these ridiculous characters--or to reveal that they, too, know the whole thing is a joke. Catherine Weary's sparkling Josephine holds the stage through sheer vocal perfection alone--she could probably handle Puccini with ease. Donald Hovey's Ralph Rackstraw, too, has a full, clean tenor. Now, admittedly there isn't all that much anyonecan make of the milquetoast roles of the love-struck couple; but both Weary and Hovey shuffle between dead seriousness and deadpan...