Word: royale
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...chance to show off and audiences the opportunity to smile knowingly. George Kaufman and Edna Ferber's durable comedy doesn't make too much of this complexity, not nearly as much as some other plays in the genre, like David Mamet's A Life in the Theater. The Royal Family sticks closely to the bustling, three-act comedy formula that Kaufman and his collaborators used in so many of their perennially-revived scripts...
...ignore The Royal Family's multiple mirrors and just present it as a straightforward domestic comedy with Broadway trappings--as, with the exception of a couple of entrances, the Loeb production does--then the problem evaporates. This approach loses some of the subtlety of the play-about-actors, but then, a George Kaufman comedy hardly demands subtle treatment. Modest ambitions save the Loeb's Royal Family from becoming a grandiose statement about "the theatre" and salvage an evening's entertainment out of the alluring labyrinth of mirrors...
...course, The Royal Family moments of emotional excess aren't its best, and the Loeb cast is strong precisely where the script is strong: situational comedy. The first act drags a bit, but both second and third build to those frenzied, crowded scenes into which Kaufman is always tossing one more character. Both Cantor and Sam Samuels as Wolfe, the family's agent, have a knack for comic timing, and Wilber drops off-hand insults like time-bombs. Jeffrey Horwitz and Mario Aieta, as the men in the actress's lives who are forever barred from understanding their calling, receive...
Prince Philip picked the spot, a wooded glen on the grounds of Balmoral Castle. There, to mark the 32nd wedding anniversary of Britain's Queen and her husband, photographers recorded them with their three sons and their married daughter. Eleven royal dogs uncomposed some of the pictures as they flitted about the family feet. So, too, did First Grandchild Peter Phillips, 2, who distracted Mother Anne, 29, Uncles Charles, 31, Andrew, 19, and Edward, 15, and his grandmother with a lively game of Ring-a-ring of roses in which Master Peter dropped delightedly to the turf when...
...Treasure (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $7.95), Shulevitz speaks in his own voice to tell the story of old Isaac who dreams of a treasure far away, near the royal residence. The poor man has no ambition to play the palace, but his hunger for riches leads him on, only to prove that travel is narrowing and that no one can become truly rich until he looks into his hearth and soul. The back-in-your-own-backyard conclusion is timeworn, but the book's slow cadences and sprightly tones lend it the character of a legend that can never grow...