Word: pageanteers
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...entered the Met last week wondering how far the director's passion for outsize verisimilitude would extend. Would he cut off the Prince of Persia's head and stick it on a pole? Build the Great Wall of China? Or (gasp!) actually respect the libretto and provide a tasteful pageant that would suit the lush, exotic music without overwhelming...
...Sporting Life" is a quick succession of aspects of the wide world of competition. In this expertly choreographed sequence, the satiric targets include the Miss America pageant, the Olympic, and ski-lift conversation. Yes, the targets are obvious and very easy, but thankfully so are the laughs...
...might expect the same fate to befall Smile, adapted from a 1975 Michael Ritchie film that satirized beauty pageants. The narrative, centering on girls who are strangers, inevitably lacks complex relationships and love interest. Moreover, it is difficult to write a parody much funnier than the real Miss America proceedings. And it is hard to keep audiences interested in the climax -- which entrant will win -- after repeatedly telling them it shouldn't matter. Curiously, Smile works. It is a swift-paced, skillfully performed and thoroughly professional entertainment that balances amusement at the shallow ambitions of the characters with respect...
...when it's over, and you've stepped back into the cold night, you realize you haven't been to a mere hockey game. You've been to a pageant...
...first and last 25 pages of To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee. Because it's not every novel that has its young heroine dressed like a ham for a Halloween pageant, because Lee creates the archetypal American neighborhood and has the good grace to let you explore it, kid-like, by the light of midnight streetlamps, and because Boo Radley, with his taste for live squirrels and lastminute heroics, is the embodiment of Halloween itself--a big, lurking Boogie Man, with a heart of gold...