Word: plays
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Since drunk scenes in comedies have a way of being funny independently of their context, why not turn out a play that consists almost entirely of drunk scenes? Why not, in fact, write Drink To Me Only? Well, two jokers named Abram S. Ginnes and Ira Wallach have done it. When they finish rewriting, they might well have on their hands a piece of farce of cataclysmic jocularity...
...well to excise entirely the pretty, insipid secretary who, it turns out at the end, is going to marry the hero after all. And they ought to write the moral issue out of the plot, because they handle it very clumsily, and because it does not belong in their play anyway. (A very wise old critic has remarked that sleazy sentimentality and pseudo-morality are the two worst vices of the commercial theater...
...Ginnes and Mr. Wallach have little in the way of taste or style, but, providentially enough, they have got Tom Poston to play the bibulating barrister. The idea of watching an actor stumbling and mumbling for nearly two hours is not an intrinsically attractive one, but Mr. Poston bears up beautifully under his incredibly heavy load. His sober scenes are mediocre, but as soon as he is suitably fueled he takes off like a rocket. He delivers quick wisecracks and long monologues with conviction and beautiful timing, but nothing he says is funnier than his silent, abstracted attempt...
...ringmaster for the three-ring circus that surrounds Mr. Poston is George Abbott, who seems to have been directing this sort of play since long before nearly anybody was born. In his old age Mr. Abbott has grown permissive towards arm-waving and other forms of over-acting, but nobody can deny that he keeps things fairly lively. Among his hired hands, Paul Hartman is disappointing as the septuxorial playboy, but a tubby gent named John McGiver, playing the foggiest of Mr. Poston's employers, takes up some of the slack by being funny both drunk and sober...
Today's key singles contest is between Roger Tuckerman '59 and Oxford's ace, William Gunnery. In the first doubles match Jeremy Hogben and Jem Baily will oppose David Kingly and Edward Harding '58, the only veteran of the 1956 English tour. Charles Devens '32 will play Cambridge's Ian Stewart today, while Dwight and John Davis will represent Harvard in the final matches on Saturday...