Word: slade
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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ROMANTIC COMEDY by Bernard Slade...
...Darth Vader-complete with mask and laser sword-Johnson, 32, not only wriggles out of his elaborate costume but along the way he also executes a ribald torch dance, pours flaming alcohol over his body, swallows a lighted torch and twirls sparklers. The third and final ecdysiast is Larry Slade, 32, who once worked as a bodyguard for the pianist Liberace. To feminine cries of "Take it off, take it all off!" Slade slowly peels away his tight black outfit and then performs a slinky number with a towel under the kaleidoscope lights before he parades among the tables...
...characters are Doris (Ellen Burstyn) and George (Alan Alda), strangers who meet at a motel and end up in bed. Though married to others, the hero and heroine continue their affair on a one-weekend-per-year basis. Luckily, Writer Bernard Slade monitors the couple at five-year rather than annual intervals...
...year? For no reason other than to preserve the writer's one-set gimmick. Why do the adulterers profess so much affection for each other's spouse and kids? So that old-fashioned audiences won't be too threatened by the couple's yearly transgressions. Slade is a classic practitioner of the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too school of Broadway dramaturgy. He seems to be saying that a carefully circumscribed adultery will actually improve a marriage, but who in real life can control their passions as well as Doris and George? Same Time, Next...
What pushes Same Time, Next Year from silliness into bad taste is the writer's pretentiousness. Not only does he trivialize marriage and sex for cheap one-liners, but he also manages to plunder the social history of three decades. In Slade's hands, even the Viet Nam War is a cue for hokey costume gags and mechanical changes of dramatic pace. The man has no shame...