Word: knocks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...holes over California's Don Whitt, 26, despite a tremendous rally by Whitt that included a startling hole-in-one on the 145-yd. 13th. Hebert, meanwhile, was hitting his approach shots with machine-gun precision, putting straight enough on Dayton's tricky greens to knock off Michigan's Walter Burkemo, 38, one of the game's canniest match players...
Despite the serious overtones, the play is above all comedy, which is what evidently escaped the Tufts' players. The cast was unfortunately headed by Fred Blais, who, miscast as Knock, turned in a dismal performance. While maintaining the Doctor's mock-solemnity, he not only failed to imbue him with the necessary dynamism and authority, but utterly lacked Knock's resourcefulness, wit, and ability to manipulate people. His awkward use of medical instruments, moreover, was not calculated to convince the audience that he was more than a bungler, which Knock most emphatically...
Although the first act progressed at a fast clip, the second and third slowed down where they should have speeded up. In the last act, Knock's monotoned passages which demanded lyricism and droned on until the audience was rescued from sleep only by the bustling hotel-staff scene...
...Knock's bored aloofness instead of swaggering magnetism mars the second act and destroys the delicate balance between comedy and satire. In place of a series of quick, witty repartees between Knock and his clients, we have a succession of labored interviews which destroy the comic and bury the satiric...
Credit is due H. Henry Franck's interpretation of the town crier and Paul Fithian's performance as the gullible schoolmaster. M. Mousquet is only sketchily defined by Jack McGrail, and the succession of rural bumpkins who fall for Knock's prescriptions emerge from the clinic like so many neatly packaged sandwiches from an automat...