Word: playlets
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Most painful, Director Jack Viertel stretched the eighteen minute playlet to half an hour, on the theory that unhappiness slows all conversations down to 121/2 rpm. He mis-paced differently in the mask scene, which moved too fast to contain the action and the full cast...
EVER SLEEP with an elephant? Adam does in Norman Dietz' Apple Bit, the second of the three Lowell House absurdities. But, in order to follow the text from Genesis, he jilts the pachyderm before the playlet begins in favor of the more renowned Eve. After all, Eve has her points. As played by Leesa Freedman, Eve tends to do a bump and a grind when a mere bump would suffice. Nevertheless, she's an amusing sharp-tongued every-woman, who insists that her husband stand up to God like a man. And Eve favors hiding after the apple because...
...PARTY and THE BASEMENT are a pair of Pinter puzzlers that amuse as well as bemuse. The first playlet deals with a successful businessman whose system short-circuits when all the forces in his life-secretary, wife, children, parents-come together at an office gathering. In the second, two men and a girl try to conquer each other and their living space...
...twitchy dance of premarital jitters enlivens the third playlet. Mike (Marvin Lichterman) bursts into the apartment of his fiancee Susan (Mariclare Costello) at 4 a.m. to tell her that the wedding bells are not going to chime. Fluttering around like a chicken with its head cut off, he sputters out a dozen reasons why the match would be catastrophic: like, for instance, her arms are too thin. When his hysteria runs out of steam, Susan blandly and sweetly asks him if he and his father got fitted for their tuxedos today...
...fourth playlet depicts the mating dance as a marathon. Frank (Richard Castellano) and Bea (Helen Verbit) have been shuffling around together for more than 30 years. They can't imagine anything else, and while they remember an occasional hurt, such as Frank's infidelity, they can scarcely recall a joy. Yet they are appalled that their son Richy (Bobby Alto) is breaking up with his wife Joan (Candy Azzara) after only six years of marriage. The elders try to patch things up. But incompatibility and compatibility are equally obscure. Richy's and Joan's reasons...