Word: pas
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...praise gay men. Armed with tierce wigs, dangerous pumps, elegant gowns, and daggered puns (sounds a bit like Stonewall, n'est-ce Pas?), the Hasty Pudding's Romancing the Throne has achieved a monument to camp, a piercingly funny edifice to the fine art of bombastic play. I do not mean to imply that gay is camp is gay (or even, God forbid, that the Hasty Pudding is gay). But gay men have always had a particular propensity for camp, and if this year's show is any indication, gay men still contribute a great deal to the preservation...
Nowhere is it more brilliantly manifested than in his lawcourt drawings: the pompous judges, the robed lawyers whispering their deals and making their pleas, the cavernous Piranesian spaces of the anteroom to the Palace of Justice known as the Salle des Pas-Perdus, or Room of Wasted Steps, the frightened clients, the stone-faced ushers, the bewildered accused in the dock. It took another 19th century genius, Dickens, to convey in fiction what Daumier gives in line and wash: the sense of the law, not as a means toward fairness or justice but as an enormous and self-feeding machine...
Holmes' version does regain its gusto by the final scene, when Kitri and Basilio marry after successfully foiling Gamache and Lorenzo. The townspeople join in the extravagant celebration with waving fans and clattering castanets, but the highlight of the finale is the grande pas de deux. Sevillano enchants Armand with her coquetishness and bedazzles the audience with her technical skill. She skips delicately across the stage en pointe, slices through the air with split-second leaps and performs multiple pirouettes and fouette turns with luscious ease. Armand tosses his head more sexily than ever while leaping in furious circles about...
Their hesitant courtship becomes an exquisite pas de deux between Josette Day and Jean Marais. Cocteau was blessed to have two such accomplished actors playing the lead roles. Day, with her delicate cheekbones and tremulous lovliness, is radiant; the other-wordly image of Beauty in a dark cloak stays in one's memory for days. Marais is triumphant as the Beast. In Berard's makeup and ornate costumes, he displays a flair not present in any of his other performances. He looks at once noble and ridiculous, menacing and silly, and his resonant, incantatory voice is unforgettable...
Bowties are less common than neckties for interview wear, but not a faux pas. According to Susan Lindstrom, a recruiter with Price Waterhouse in Boston, bow ties are "not uncommon," and can make a favorable impression if they reflect the interviewee's character...