Word: pomp
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MARTHA DUFFY recalls going to the Exeter Theatre in Boston in 1947 to see a film of Queen Elizabeth's wedding to Prince Philip. "I was enchanted," she says, "by the eerie slow pace and pomp of the ceremony." Since then Duffy, now a TIME senior writer, has avidly tracked the Windsors, editing three cover-length stories on Princess Diana and writing two more, including this week's report on the royal divorce. Her fascination is less for dynasty than for star quality: "Diana was always eloquent about herself, through body language. She has the concentration of a fine actress...
...Pomp and ceremony embarrass her, even after six years in the lime-light following her 1989 Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for the Heidi Chronicles, a New York Drama Critics Circle Prize, and numerous other accolades. For "An Evening with Wendy," the Gingham armchairs and end-table supplied by Harvard's Office for the Arts were far more fitting than the usual lectern setting of her speaking tour...
...really was the best of the U.N., pomp and circumstance, and everyone talked about reforms that have to be made," reports Marguerite Michaels from the United Nations, where three days of 50th anniversary celebrations concluded Tuesday night. Delegates unanimously adopted a painstakingly worded declaration that called for reforming the powerful Security Council, and (in a swipe at the U.S.) demanded that members pay their bills "in full and on time." Michaels notes that several reforms actually may take place in the near future. "Peacekeeping will change -- the U.N will return to its previous role of going into a country only...
...that is sissy stuff compared with the shenanigans at Pomp Duck, self-described as "a restaurant out of control." The staff (actors, mostly from Germany) are nuts. They steal your bread, feed you soup, mummify you in packing tape, give you a quick shampoo. When waiters announce the fish course, beware--you will get damp! There are also fat ladies in skimpy costumes, a man who plays Vivaldi on liquor bottles, an opera singer treated rudely by the maitre d' and a food critic who can't stop complaining. "It's like eating at Denny's!" he shouts. The whole...
Punctuating the chaos are three fine acrobat acts, in the Cirque du Soleil mode, of which trapezist Helene Turcotte, a muscular beauty, is the champion enthraller. But these oases of grace only underline the frenetic naivete of the rest of Pomp Duck. After 3 1/2 hours of the chef chasing the chanteuse, visitors rush out to inhale that acrid New York air as if it were attar of roses. Even Hell's Kitchen is preferable to hell's kitsch...