Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...luck of the gods fell on Stratford when Maggie Smith was cast in the role. She has an invincible gift for Restoration comedy. She can tease a spasm of laughter from an inert line, and she renders the great set speeches as if Mozart had been transmuted into prose. She makes startlingly effective use of what can only be called Brecht's "alienation effect," inhaling a line in one breath like a drag on a fresh cigarette and instantaneously tossing it away like a dead butt. This is well suited to Congreve, with his worldly ability to appraise life...
...Broadway ever erects a monument to a patron saint of laughter, Neil Simon will have to be it. He is back in good form in California Suite, a quartet of playlets in the same mold as his Plaza Suite except that the setting is now the Beverly Hills Hotel...
...five phases of his foul shot a thousand times a day. Behind all this lay the key, the three D's; Determination, Dedication, and Defense, because success is 1 per cent innpiration and 99 per cent perspiration. One can imagine streetball players bent double, clapping their Chuck Taylors in laughter if they ever heard of or read it, but of course they never...
...though. If we were, wouldn't we have called John Davidson lousy and gotten rid of him? Where the hell did we get John Davidson? Who asked for him? And where is the genius Sid Caesar now? He once made us all go into frenzied tribal dances of laughter in front of our television screens. People hurt themselves, they laughed so hard. Bring back the huge, rubber-faced dynamo. His endless energy was a war on the static, the complacent and the passively stupid. When Sid Caesar was stupid, he was actively stupid...
...always there are some stares. Awkward is the only way to carry all this stuff. Did he sense laughter, derision in the faces of some of those he passed by? He recalled the words of captain Joe Del Ponte '78: "Initially, for me, the job made me more class conscious. Through repeated exposure to all this disdain, I realized just how ridiculous the people doing the disdaining really were." And Del Ponte's further encouragement: "I've always extolled the virtue and the pride to be found in a job well done. At least that's what I tell...