Word: plotlessly
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...Humiliated in the larger world, these people fiercely guard their dignity close to home. Defeated by enemies too distant to see, they lash out at their own kind -- a colleague in Ma Rainey, a son in Fences. These confrontations can seem like old-fashioned melodrama in comparison with the plotless minimalism now in vogue. But Wilson has the weight of history on his side. If Troy Maxson turns tyrant, betraying his wife with a younger woman and blasting his son's chances for an athletic scholarship to college, his demand for autocratic power is understandable, almost forgivable, in the context...
Water is a plotless wonder that vaguely whirlpools around the trials and tribulations of the people of Cascara, a mythical last remnant of the British Empire that the British would be only too happy to get rid of. Michael Caine is the colonial governor, sincerely concerned with the welfare of the people and his ganja crop. Brenda Vaccaro is the governor's Guatemalan wife with an unsavory past and personality. She doesn't get an "A" for originality with her Charo imitation and dialogue...
...worse chaos of the First World War by a German collagist, poet and would-be dramaturge, Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948). The scenario casts a long shadow. Schwitters' ambition to assault all the senses with a megalomaniac collage of real things onstage is the middle term between Wagner and the plotless, junk-crammed happenings that were the talk of the New York art world in the early '60s. The more one sees of Schwitters, the more Robert Rauschenberg's and Jasper Johns' work in the '50s seems to owe to him: the stuffed goat, the paint-soaked bed, the light bulb...
Amis introduces a contrasting character named Martin Amis, an English writer. He is everything that Self is not: disciplined, patient, and well read. He is also a modish literary distraction from technical problems inherent in plotless first-person narratives. Will Self ever direct a movie? Will he ever finish reading Animal Farm? Will the manna ever stop falling? The answers matter little, since Amis' buffoon is at his best when he is doing his worst...
...PICTURE BEGAN to look brighter with "The Leaves Are Fading," a modern ballet choreographed by Antony Tudor with music by Antonin Dvorak. Gelsey Kirkland and Kevin Mckenzie were the leading dancers in this magnificent piece that combined amazing technical achievements with a tranquillizing, Swirling scene. The dance is plotless and merely alternates different couples dancing in pairs and in groups on stage in front of a new-green act. The dancers were all costumed in gauzy, chiffon material that increased the hazy, beautiful effect Kirkland and Mckenzie performed brilliantly. They seemed to be perfectly suited to each other and never...