Word: playing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Drew Weinstein)--also not in the Aristophanes version--who says he's going to close the show, he simply cannot permit it to be performed on a stage at Harvard. Why? Who is this cliched creature anyway, and what in this tame, already-too-long play could he possibly be objecting to, except for its poor blocking, missed cues and amateurish deliveries? Your interests are piqued; you figure the play will get more bawdy as the evening goes on. It doesn...
...scene with husband Kinesias (Joe Smith), is far more coy and less brazenly seductive than Aristophanes intended. About the only female character who comes off well is Ward's Granny, who, with her growls and broomsticks, chases after the nerd. Since there is no such character in the original play, she is more free than most of the other characters to give her role an unconstrained interpretation. Her facial expressions are themselves almost worth the price of admission...
...play picks up a bit when the men come on stage. Two members of the chorus of old men, Pinocles (Alan Ruof) and Mastocles (Ray Bertolino), put some expression into their voices, but their parades around the stage seem foolish. Smith, as Kinesias, brings energy to his role, but too often he delivers his lines in singsong yells rather than with the distress of a man in dire need of sexual gratification...
...Commissioner (Charles Mills) delivers his lines with the humdrum tedium nearly everyone else seems to have mastered, and his squadron of guards whisper to each other every time they're supposed to move three steps to the right or left. In fact, nearly all the blocking in the play consists of simple pacing up and down the stage. Two steps to the left, deliver a line, four steps to the right, deliver another line, and poof--instant play...
...weren't for the State Department, natives of countries around the globe would play better hoop and learn to love the United States, Arnold "Red" Auerbach, general manager of the Boston Celtics, told a Kennedy School crowd last night...