Word: scripted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After the belly-bursting laughter of Act II, Act III pales by comparison. While there are some interesting moments as Dallas' cast stumbles through one mistake after another, desperately trying to get back to the script, most of the bumbling becomes tedious...
Unfortunately, playwright Christopher Durang seems convinced that the audience will not understand his message unless it is beaten into them, and his script frequently employs a baseball bat where a fly-swatter would do. The result is a production which, while entertaining, is pretentious and overblown...
There is no shortage of humorous moments in Beyond Therapy, and when Durang's script finds an appropriate target the result is hillarious. His comments on masculinity are particularly witty; Bruce and Dr. Framingham obsessively display their chest hairs, and Prudence responds to one of Bruce's breakdowns by saying, "I don't think that men should cry unless something falls on them...
...director Amy Cabranes accepts Durang's heavy-handed script much too readily, and rather than toning down the rhetoric, Cabranes has the actors hype the play's already overblown elements. Hernandez's bubble-blowing, Snoopy-wielding analyst comes off well the first time, but a constant repetition of the same sight gags and crazy word substitutions (Hernandez says "porpoise" when she means "patient" at least six times) rapidly becomes unconvincing. Some subtlety would have been nice; we don't need to see Hernandez in a pink nightgown with a teddy to know that her behavior is childish...
Guber and Peters joined forces in 1980 to form a film-production company. Guber's nose for good script ideas and his flair for deal making meshed with Peters' hustle and tenacity. After several hits, including Missing and Flashdance, the partners signed their first, allegedly exclusive production contract with Warner...