Word: paravicini
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Dates: during 1975-1975
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...this approach. For one thing, Morphos must sacrifice some suspense on the altar of comic effect, and as a result, the final revelations lose part of their force. In addition, her emphasis curtails the range of emotions implicit in the script, since characters as different as the cynical Mr. Paravicini and the pathetic would-be architect Christopher Wren emerge in this production as similarly successful comic types. Sometimes laughter intrudes where it shouldn't; for example, Wren's paranoid outburst in the second act ("You're all against me, everyone's always been against me"), is in context far more...
...specific play, she is poking fun at the conventions of the murder mystery genre, including her own work. At one point, for instance, she has Detective Sergeant Trotter--himself an insane parody of crime-fighting zeal--ask the other characters to reconstruct the crime. "Oh, that old chestnut," Mr. Paravicini sneers...
...STANDOUTS in a generally fine cast are Davis Goodman as the effeminate Wren and Sam Bloomfield as Mr. Paravicini. Goodman minces marvelously through his role as the child-like homosexual, and Bloomfield, clad in an elegant dinner jacket and bedizened with rings, gives a superbly controlled performance as the uninvited guest. Also good is Mark Howard, appropriately manic as Detective Sergeant Trotter. Nancy Abrams makes a stony-faced Mrs. Boyle, although her carefully accented syllables sound too much like metered poetry...