Word: quack
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...everybody agrees. "Merrick is not the right doctor for this Invalid," says a producer. "He's a quack who's got the patient hooked on drugs." Merrick's critics-a cast of thousands-ad mit that what can be done by industrial methods, he does well: the package is attractive, the contents safe-but unoriginal. "The man's not creative," a director says. "He's a packager and an importer." .All but four (The Matchmaker, Maria Golovin, Milk Train, I Was Dancing) of the 19 Merrick shows that originated in America were musicals or comedies with more Merrick than merit...
...present some enactment of the central mysteries of Christianity. Arthur is "hermaphroditic Adam," father-and mother-of mankind, also divine child, also martyred divinity. In these terms, Mandala becomes not a dense literary puzzle but an obscenity. Arthur, the shaman of Sarsaparilla, is too monstrous to think upon: quack religion and genuine psychopathology are mixed up. White has written a mystery play in drag...
...plot is carnally direct. Mr. Horner (Stacy Keach), a notorious London lecher, has it bruited about town through his quack doctor that recent sexual misadventures in France have left him impotent. He rightly guesses that this will give him unlimited access to bored wives and unmatched opportunities to cuckold their husbands. The game is at least as important as the score to Horner, and he especially relishes the sight of husbands forcing their wives upon him under the delusion that he is an innocuous companion...
...principal narrator (a role Thomas took when the play premiered in New York) both understood his part and spoke it clearly; if he has conquered opening-night nervousness, his reading ought to set a standard for the rest of the cast. Patrick Diehl, a splendid basso, made the lusting quack, Mr. Waldo, seem a lovable rogue. And Mary Moss, playing a variety of loose women, could hardly have been improved upon (her singing was off-key, but there again, one suspects nerves). Her question -- "Oh, isn't life a terrible thing, thank God?"--gave me chills...
...following in the footsteps of the Israelites. Forced to abandon their ancestral village by the construction of a British dam that will soon inundate their homes, the Masai head for dry promised land under the leadership of a conman named Moses. Moses is Robert Mitchum, a diamond smuggler and quack doctor who peddles muscle tonic to the natives, packs precious stones in his stethoscope, and conducts his exodus with the unholier-than-thou sneer of a rascal who interprets Mosaic law as the survival of the fittest. Mitchum looks most comfortable when he climbs aboard an elephant called Emily...