Word: manic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Perhaps it was all a gaudy American self-indulgence, the war and the music getting together to create a prototype of the rock video. In both the countercultural side-show and the councils of power that made war policy, there was a note of manic narcissism, of self-importance, almost of autoeroticism. There was dangerous fun in the air, the sheer buzz of so much power, a life-and-death excitement. But someone should have known better...
Cyndi Lauper is the manic outsider in every high school class - brassy and sensitive, dippy and shrewd - whose hair seems to have been colored by a box of melted Crayolas and who dresses in the kinds of duds gypsies might wear if they had proms. Part Piaf, part Little Peggy March, she also has a razzle- dazzle, multi-octave range, a voice that can coax a broken promise out of a ballad or pin a rocker right to the mat. She has the whole package. But Madonna has the look...
...MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP. This perfect travesty raids Jane Eyre, Poe and mummy movies. Everett Quinton and Playwright-Director Charles Ludlam perform all eight roles, some in drag, some simultaneously, with manic precision...
...multiple light sources, off-stage voices, incidental music, and those moments when Hamm and Clov overlap lines to create unintelligible gibberish all distract from the finely honed intensity of the play. Philip Glass's excellent score only works when the thundering drums and manic melody suddenly halt in the deathly silence that opens the show...
Even at this time of year, Washington, D.C., is crawling with flowers and plants. Though the city is now consumed by manic post-election talk, the local flora manage to get an awful lot of attention. Civic boosters tend to be horticultural zealots as well. And they have a point: Washington is high spirited and blithe, by Washington's standards, when its greenswards are green and the vast federal flower patches are blooming. Just a few weeks ago in Rock Creek Park, for instance, the National Park Service had a Dixieland band and a blue-grass group come...