Word: mad
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Near the end of her 20-min. mad scene, Miss Havisham cries out, "I am tired!" There is a derisive titter from the audience. They have sympathy for Soprano Rita Shane, who plays Miss Havisham. She has flung her voice valiantly through trills, runs, arpeggios, and sung paragraph upon paragraph of words that dwarf the great mad scene in Lucia di Lammermoor. But the audience is tired too, because this kind of listening, when most of the words are unintelligible, is also hard work...
...strength is not that of a novelist, but as an entertainer. In one very funny set piece. Littlefield, an associate fond of drugs and arcane legal philosophy, writes a brief for a crucial case that cites Cicero instead of legal precedents. He is fired by Lynch, a partner driven mad by the weight of his famous legal ancestors. The next morning, it is Lynch's turn to perform. In court to argue the case, he opens his mouth, but no words come out, leaving Weston to wonder if the poor wretch is going to make a silent oral argument...
...just an excuse for the dance music. In the famous trio "So muss allein ich bleiben" ("I must remain alone, then"), Rosalinda--whom Gretchen Johnson plays with vocal agility but no sense of style--begins lamenting her parting with husband Einstein. But she, Eisenstein, and Alfred the mad Italian tenor keep breaking out of the mock tragic music into a perky little waltz, as if to tip the audience off that nothing happening on the stage is terribly important...
...chew up the scenery. Gortner's portrayal of Teddy is as overblown as Michael Moriarty's star turn in Commissioner, he is such a bundle of stylized theatrical tics that Teddy's unpleasantness never becomes psychologically interesting. He is just a shrieking, obnoxious madman, an unintentional Mad magazine parody of Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon...
...People are mad because they don't understand the system," Bloch believes. "The old and the poor do not understand why they should pay anything to anyone. Retired people complain about paying taxes on interest income. Middle-income people feel that they are grossly overtaxed because Government programs are aimed at aiding lower-income people...