Word: mostellers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Broadway finds an unfavorable balance of dramatic trade, with the two most provocative original plays and the liveliest musicals all imported. Rhinoceros, a farcical-satirical assault on conformity by France's perky avant-gardist Eugene Ionesco, is somewhat obvious and farfetched but also exhilarating-particularly when Star Zero Mostel virtually turns himself into a rhinoceros onstage. A Taste of Honey, a first play by Britain's young (19 at the time) Shelagh Delaney, is an unhistrionic, earthy drama about a desperately lonely girl. And the musical Irma La Douce, French to its very bedposts, boasts Broadway...
...will become absolutely anything, so long as it runs in herds, Rhinoceros is far too long in making its point. Actually the play is much better farce than satire. The pandemonium of the first rhinoceros scares, the hurly-burly of the mounting rhinoceros fever, the sight of Actor Zero Mostel virtually turning into a rhinoceros right onstage, are all good knockabout fun. And the dialogue throws darts into a variety of human rationalizations and cliches...
...magazine is worth its price for Starbuck alone, but there's more. John W. Loofbourow interviews the Poets' Theatre personified in an enlightening dialogue marred only by a pedantic reference to Latin drama in the Elizabethan universities. Of 21 or so drawings by Joyce Reopel, Kaffe Fassett, Zero Mostel, Arthur Polonsky, Lynn Schroeder, Jane Nichols, John Wilson, and Renzo Grazzini, more kind words might be said, but that would require another review...
...sets of Good as Gold, especially a mammoth picturesque scale at Fort Knox, are quite gay and appropriate. The acting is not disappointing, but it cannot help much. Roddy Macdowall handles most of what can be done with the hero's role with buoyant competence, and Zero Mostel is often very funny, bellowing enough in his role as the jolly rascal to cover up some of the obviousness of his speeches. The rest of the cast is also adequately adept, but nothing about the production is bright enough to make the evening more than a nearly-made-it comedy...
Good as Gold and what could be better? A new perhaps comedy written by John Patrick. Roddy Mcdowell, Paul Ford, Zero Mostel, and a carrot seem to be starred. Opens tonight at the Schubert...