Word: melodrama
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...preliminaries weren't wild enough, Acts II and III, after the faceoff, were even more bizarre. Harvard won the opener, a seven-minute blitzkrieg, 4-0. Cornell won the finale, a 53-minute melodrama...
While mocking popular melodramas of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England, Ruddygore is a melodrama in its own right. The plot revolves around a country gentleman Robin Oakapple (Phillip Resnick) who has run away from his position as the duke of Murgatroyd because in order to be duke, he must follow a long-standing family tradition and (of course) commit a crime a day. Oakapple falls in love with the beautiful village maiden Rose Maybud (Erika Fox Zabusky) who has a particular fetish with etiquette...
...away rather than directing them at the audience or another character. Robert Stattel as the Duke is the worst offender in this regard, often literally spitting out his lines; since the Duke has several long and emotional scenes, the results range from something resembling a temper tantrum to outright melodrama. A similar lack of control hampers the performances of Marianna Owen as Isabella and John Bellucci as Claudio...
...Washington courtroom where former Environmental Protection Agency Official Rita Lavelle stood trial for perjury last week, the familiar charges of conflict of interest and political manipulation flew once again. Former aides told how Lavelle had wept while they hastily removed whole briefcases of sensitive documents. Yet for all the melodrama, the accusations seemed almost irrelevant, an old story relegated to the back pages. Since the scandal climaxed last spring with the firing or resignation of the EPA's top echelon, the agency has been seemingly transformed into a model of probity...
...Pryor's jokes are impudent, but not all are fresh. A routine about visiting Africa is recycled from Live on the Sunset Strip; the warmup baiting of the audience was done in Live in Concert; the junkie serenade recalls Pryor's role in his 1973 melodrama Some Call It Loving. It can also be tough to maintain your underdog snarl when you've just signed a movie contract worth $40 million. (This is a pose Pryor's sassy "godson," Eddie Murphy, avoided in his delirious HBO concert last month, the better to strut his glitter...