Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...movie Allen plays Walter Hollander, a New Jersey caterer vacationing in Eastern Europe along with his wife and daughter. They are mistaken for spies, and take refuge in an American embassy being run temporarily by the ambassador's bumbling son (Michael J. Fox). Despite its dated cold war plot, the 1966 play shows that Allen even at this early stage was a skilled farceur. The Hollanders' presence in the embassy causes mounting chaos involving a visiting emir, a fugitive priest who does magic and a stuffy embassy official who gets conked on the head and thinks he's the Wright...
...production by the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players, is something of a mixed bag. Musically speaking, the show is delightful, with Sullivan's score brought to life by a strong cast and a superb orchestra. But dramatically speaking, it is a disappointment: it suffers from an awkward, complex plot, and with a running time of three hours, is much too long...
Ruddigore's plot is long-winded and strange. The main character, Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, the baronet of Ruddigore, is hiding in a small English village in order to escape a family curse. A misguided witch doomed each successive baronet to commit one crime a day or be killed. Ruthven left his brother, Despard, back at Ruddigore to assume the title of baronet and fall victim to the curse. Meanwhile, having adopted the clever pseudonym "Robin," Ruthven falls in love with the village sweet-heart, the prissy flake Rose Maybud. For the rest of the first act, Ruthven competes with...
...whole premise of a curse that forces one to be "naughty" is Britishly weird, and as the driving dramatic element of the plot is inadequate. The second act, set in the castle of Ruddigore with the ninny Ruthven assuming the role of evil baronet, is humorous at first; the effect of the spooky forbears of Ruthven stepping out of their portraits is cool for a while. But when the spirits all start convincing Ruthven to be "bad," it just gets inane and silly. The conversion of Despard and Margaret from the morally loose characters of the first act to puritanical...
Inevitably the strong performances of the talented leads drown within the boring and inane plot. When Ruddigore was first produced in 1887, the audience began booing and screaming "Bring back the Mikado!" After that, Gilbert and Sullivan had the good sense to trim down the play, and revivals ever since have gone along with these changes. But the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players have chosen to override these changes and restore Ruddigore to its original clunky form. They do a disservice to their own efforts and their talented cast by turning a potentially entertaining theatrical event into a tiresome...