Word: shamelessness
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Crazy for You was greeted with all but universal cheers last week, less for what the show is -- a pleasant evening of well-loved songs and imaginative choreography hitched to a slow narrative, obvious jokes, completely undefined characters and mediocre performances -- than for its shameless retrospection, its bland assertion that Broadway's future lies in its past. The second act contains two gratuitous slurs on the "concept" musicals that have dominated the past decade: a visual slap at Grand Hotel and a verbal slam toward Les Miserables. Yet those shows have precisely what Crazy for You so painfully lacks: propulsive...
...From the very beginning, the tendency of the nation's lawmakers to posture or steal or make damn fools of themselves has been an inspiration to reformers and parodists alike. In 1794 Thomas Jefferson, who was easily shocked by the depths to which other politicians could sink, denounced the "shameless corruption" he had witnessed in the First and Second Congresses. A century later, Mark Twain, who was not so easily shocked, insisted there was no such thing as a "distinctively native American criminal class, except Congress." In 1906 Henry Adams, whose own father and grandfather had served in the House...
...Lion in Winter--by Jeff Goldman. December, 1156. The royal family meets to celebrate Christmas and engages in a battle of cutting wit, unscrupulous deceit and shameless manipulation as they fight for control, vengeance and the English throne. In the Loeb Experimental Theater...
When Garrison Keillor reinvented the radio variety show some years ago with his Prairie Home Companion program Saturday evenings on public radio, the driving emotional force was a shameless, moony nostalgia for the never-was. But misty reminiscence taken straight out of the bottle is saccharine. What gives Keillor's wamblings about Midwestern small-timers their cutting edge (they continue on his new American Radio Company show) is a rare mix of exile's longing and eye-rolling exasperation. Were we really that awful, and was it really that grand...
...than Donahue. Phil still scores his coups (he had the first TV interview with Wanda Holloway, convicted of plotting the murder of her daughter's cheerleading rival) and does his homework. But his hyperventilating style has reached the point of self-parody, and his exploitative gimmicks are growing increasingly shameless. No one but Donahue could kill an hour debating whether beauty contests in bars are demeaning to women or just good clean fun -- or manage to keep a straight face while trotting out, after every commercial break, a different trio of scantily clad women to demonstrate these contests...