Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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From the angle taken by this particular adaptation, the acting is first-rate. One does not tend to think of Ibsen as funny; this production favors a style of self-revelation that continually provokes laughter--and not a few hisses. But the acting, like the characterization, is not reduced to pure satire. Each person reveals psychological depths and complexities that figure into the overall ambivalence of the play. Will LeBow as Hjalmer comes across as a theatrical poseur in his own house, painting himself alternately as a self-sacrificing hero, a man of genius, and the loving patriarch...
...Close is a good sport when Cruella receives her comeuppance. Mock-refinement and unbridled laughter are replaced by a series of embarrassing pratfalls in which the animal kingdom retaliates against Cruella...
King told this story to the Faculty at its October meeting to uproarious laughter. "We can't centralize everything to save money and we can't localize everything to make everyone happy," he says...
...audience responded with laughter to his poem "Restless Leg Syndrome," in which a soldier's leg "for no apparent reason flies around the room kicking stuff...
That reaction was better than some others. Leo Stein, Picasso's wealthy American patron, called the painting a "horrible mess." Henri Matisse, with whom Picasso maintained an edgy rivalry, doubled up in laughter when he saw the work in Picasso's studio. Andre Derain, a painter who was becoming friendly with Picasso, warned an acquaintance: "This can only end in suicide. One day, Picasso will be found hanging behind the Demoiselles...