Word: misereant
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Bruce Prochnik's Oliver is singularly unaffecting, but Clive Revill's Fagin glints with eccentricity. This Fagin is not very Jewish (he has been viewed without alarm by representatives of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith), but he is a strangely epicene miser whose furtive batlike swoopings on his treasure box and triple-tempo fingering of his baubles provide comic delight...
None of the secondary parts require such virtuosity, but each of the minor actors has his own excellence. Jacques Charon, as a dim-witted, oafish servant manages to steal a scene even from Hirsch; Michel Aumont, an old miser, and Rene Camoin, an old wheezer, are unsurpassable; Micheline Boudet, believed to be an Egyptian gypsy (but in reality a long lost daughter of the old wheezer) has one scene all to herself, a scene which slowly and carefully raises the level of the audience's laughter from smiles to belly-laughs, one of the greatest scenes in the play...
...trouble spot became a source of strength. Now, with its industry rebuilt and its commerce thriving, how was West Germany using its strength? To the alarm of many of its allies who had helped the Germans in their time of trouble, West Germany is acting like a penny- pinching miser among nations, more intent on adding to its riches than on taking its responsible place in the world as a major creditor nation...
...Washington Irving's tale, Tom Walker, Yankee miser, accidentally kicks up a skull in the woods and is admonished by a guardian devil named Old Scratch. His wife loses body and soul to Old Scratch, but wily Tom sells his soul only, and for hard cash. "Lend the money," the devil suggests, "at 2% a month." "Egad," replies Tom, "I'll charge...