Word: orbach
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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George's wife has been dead a year when the play opens, and George (Jerry Orbach) still grieves, stolidly refusing efforts of his brother Leo (Herbert Edelman) to fix him up. While researching material for a new book, George accidentally phones one of Leo's prospects, an actress named Jennie (Marilyn Redfield), whose recent divorce leaves her, like George, resigned to the second chapter of her life, and being urged to date, by a friend, Faye (Jane A. Johnston). Intrigued by their mutual reluctance to get involved, Jennie and George meet, discover their minds--work in the same rhythm...
...fare much better. Herbert Edelman, no stranger to Simon's work--he appeared most recently as Walter Matthau's brother in the movie California Suite--handles Leo's comic scenes with expertise, though he tends to rush through his serious speeches. Only Jerry Orbach is completely and consistently excellent, especially in his physical gestures. At one point, he strokes his dead wife's picture as tenderly as if he were touching the woman herself--then jerks his hand away to hide the private gesture from his brother. Whether indulging in outrageous facial clowning, or making his voice crack with pain...
...power of Simon's writing and Orbach's acting help the play transcend its excessive length and half its cast. Chapter Two is not a funny play; it is a fundamentally somber play with some funny lines. The man so often heralded as America's greatest comic playwright has now chosen not to make us laugh at human pain this time. With Chapter Two, Simon puts the hurts people inflict on each other center-stage, instead of allowing us an indirect glimpse through snappy one-liners...
CHICAGO. A corrosive dance of decadence that Bob Fosse has choreographed into an electrifying musical, helped no end by Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera and Jerry Orbach...
...book is as full of holes as some of the bullet-sieved characters. Roxie Hart (Gwen Verdon), a honky-tonk '20s entertainer, murders her lover and beats the rap, thanks to a slick mouthpiece, Billy Flynn (Jerry Orbach). This scarcely matters. What matters is the erotic poetry in motion that uncoils whenever Verdon and her sister in crime Velma Kelly (Chita Rivera) do their solos and duets. They pace the show with spunk incarnate. The chorus is jazzily bacchanalian, and Patricia Zipprodt's eye-riveting costumes swirl right out of a decadent Brechtian Berlin. Chicago is a cinch...