Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Ellen Burstyn and Charles Grodin work together so skillfully that Same Time, Next Year at its worst is never painful; their timing and intonation wring laughter from even the most hackneyed routines. And as their relationship grows, the play fortunately grows with them. The comedy becomes less superficial, more an organic product of the characters' grouping attempts to find stability in the midst of flux. Coupled with the increasing richness of the humor-and this play is in parts very, very funny-is an underlying layer of sadness, an awareness of the inevitability of change in a world where...
...heighten our awareness" of these struggles by presenting them in an admittedly exaggerated, stylized manner, a manner that deliberately jars against his utterly realistic mise-en-scéne. There are moments in his movies in which be lief in what one is seeing threatens to dissolve into laughter, but there are many more in which we are shocked into a new awareness that beneath the surface of ordinary-looking lives, high dramas of genuine moral dimensions are being played...
...idol of prom crowds in strapless formals and ducktail haircuts, Sedaka wrote more than 75 top ten hits. Then the Beatles squeezed out shooby-dooby, and Sedaka slipped into obscurity. In his first U.S. album in twelve years, he retains his cozy, cheerful style; yet his songs dig deeper. Laughter in the Rain is already a hit, and Solitaire and Standing on the Inside have high musical polish...
While the actors scooted out to do the scene during the applause and loud laughter of a particularly receptive audience. I checked over the show a performance schedule taped to the wall. On it were penned abbreviations of various types of skits to be given and in what order. Tonight around twelve were featured, including a story theater, a "Dr. Sisters" TV talk show (using "to be or not to be" as the suggested famous quotation, then converting it to an overweight teenage bemoaning in a "Dear Dr. Sisters" letter: "Should I be tubby, or not tubby?"), a grand opera...
...right. But what makes. "The Proposition" such a genuinely vital and penetrating show is not merely this special type of illusion. The real vibrancy stems from the actors winsome style, a wit that can animate any dead proposition suggested by the audience into a theater alive with laughter (no matter if "smoking," "abortion," and "overeating" all turned up in this show again--the skits were always creative). As the actors came backstage from their final bows to give out mutual hugs of congratulations and relax briefly before the next show, a total rapport and group assurance seemed to wash over...