Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...further avoids monotony by alternately tingling and tickling the audience's spines. The overture and an early number that re-enacts the original curse freeze the viewer's blood, but as the plot progresses the mood shifts to a more comic melodrama, complete with Dracula-like capes and ominous laughter. The chills resume in force during Act Two's climactic portrait scene, in which the paintings of deceased Murgatroyds literally come alive--a moment that is as visually dazzling as it is technically brilliant...
...cast's defense, however, it should be noted that some of Middleton's lines would draw nothing but laughter from modern audiences, even in the hands of brilliant performers. And at some moments the Leverett House group does give us a taste of sensational horror. De Flores returns to Beatrice after the murder and presents her with the severed ring-cum-finger, still bleeding in a white handkerchief. Both Terris and Montgomery play the tableau to the hilt, he leering, she screaming. Afterwards, the tension becomes oppressive as the walks slowly, step by step across the tiny stage towards...
...grouchy to make much of them; when a director is so clearly a perfectionist, a critic can afford, for a little while anyway, to relax. Nabatoff and Bushman could sing "You're The Top" to each other instead of the audience; a few funny lines were buried in the laughter on opening night and some of the supporting players might raise their volume a little; during the second act, someone says Moon is locked in the brig, after he has clearly participated in the previous production number--oh hell, enough. The flourishes compensate for the flaws: the chorus singing tastefully...
...Washington correspondent in 1958, and has assessed six presidencies, including, of course, Jimmy Carter's. In the process, Sidey saw his city change. "Washington used to be a much slower town," he says of his early years there. "It was a more human undertaking. There was more laughter then too, and I miss that...
...short, happy days could be here again. Not Utopia, however. Far more often than now, Americans will discover that the public itself is the butt of some of the biggest jokes around. In such cases, laughter might be reduced. Still, half a laugh is better than none...