Word: skit
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...first skit, "Hungry in the Park," begins in the Chaplin vein, a hungry loafer trying to con a meal off passersby. When his begging proves unsuccessful, the tramp discovers how surprisingly delicious his fingernail tastes, and then eagerly dines on the fingers of his left hand. But before desert, the men in the white coats drag the tramp away, which is not funny...
...fact, the best of Mime I is anything but funny. Weisman's adaptation of Marceau's skit "The Cage" is a lovingly prepared allegory on the prisoner of modern society, trapped by the invisible shield of Gardol. Weisman's flappy figure strolls out in a relaxed gait and walks right into a contracting glass cage. He escapes, by breaking the wall, but ignorantly stumbles back into the trap, and to destruction...
Weisman's technique in this skit, as in all of them, is clear and careful. His hands speak in economical, controlled movements, suggesting surprise as they flatten on the cage walls and horror as they push against them. His broad mouth and wide eyes go from smile to shock with none of the obvious self-satisfaction in a welldone trick. Though some of his comic material is childish and inane, Weisman's actions provoke our willing laughter, especially when he's playing in home ground, being the snoring student in lecture or the pretentious flamenco guitarist...
...turned out to be not so much a program as a pogrom. A skit depicting a priest lewdly opposing contraception so offended the nation's Catholics that the BBC was forced to apologize publicly. Fortnight ago, Panelist Bernard Levin called Tory Leader Sir Alec Douglas-Home "a cretin." When Guest Panelist and onetime Tory Cabinet Minister Iain Macleod rebuked him for such "crude, vulgar words of abuse," a grinning Levin agreed to change "cretin" to "imbecile...
...telephone switchboards were still jammed with protesting callers when the very next night Not So Much put on a tasteless skit turning the love story of the Duke of Windsor's 1937 marriage to Wallis Warfield Simpson into a sentimental-silly comic operetta. Unluckily it happened to coincide with the sudden death of the Duke's sister, the Princess Royal, and the nation was outraged. With that last straw, Sir Hugh quietly announced that Not So Much a Programme would be, as of next week...