Word: maudlin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Angeles, even as she rages like a deranged diva, she shows endearing glints of awareness of her own tawdry emotional blackmail. A single image encapsulates the difference. When London's Norma, Patti LuPone, got her seedy protege back, by a suicide attempt, she collapsed into his arms in maudlin gratitude. The Los Angeles incarnation, Glenn Close, ends the act by lifting her bandaged arms above his embracing form, her fingers curving like talons to take him in. The former evoked weakness and despair, the rewrite an eerie grin...
...this might be impossibly fey were it not for the down-but-not-quite-out sensibilities of the two writers. Waits, the bard of last-chance saloons, has never taken deader aim at the line that separates the mordant from the maudlin. On the one hand, there's November, a bitter hymn to the month that "only believes in a pile of dead leaves/ And a moon that's the color of bone." On the other, there's I'll Shoot the Moon, in which Kathchen, daydreaming about her lover, vows to "be the pennies on your eyes" and "build...
...killing of any innocent character is invariably portrayed in such a maudlin, mawkish way that there can be no mistake about the moral status of the act. If TV shaped our behavior, then America would likely be a continent of self-righteous citizens out to exact justice in a morally simplistic world of good guys and bad guys--violent, perhaps, but not random...
...show alone. Titanic (Adam Geyer), Oberon's lustful wife (there are just a few too many wanton characters sleazing around the stage this year), delivers a magnificent torch long performance in her milky Daerie Queen outfit. Geyer's delivery almost hides the fact that the song is much too maudlin for the Pudding. Almost...
...world is dark, lonely, and savage. God is "a cold shadow," as we are informed by the surly protagonist, who moans he "could have forgiven Him for everything but not existing." Painfully maudlin commentary unfortunately comprises the bulk of this ill-fated production of Ronald Ribman's Dream of the Red Spider. If only it had been written with a sense of humor or perspective, maybe this play would have been tolerable. But the overblown dialogue, sparse plot, and half-hearted acting make this performance dull, dull, dull...