Word: slapstick
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...tourists who rubberneck at Foucheval's statue are characteristic of another problem: they are funny in a slapstick way, just as Foucheval is often funny in a flip way. But comedy added to philosophy does not automatically produce tragicomedy: Morrow has made no synthesis of tone. It is a miracle that the audience can appreciate the mood of Moira's marvelous waltz scene. The last act is also dramatically outrageous, despite fine touches of lighting and staging...
Happily, operatic tradition and the difficulties of musical presentation excuse such a trite plot. At the same time they also obscured several of Mr. Smith's funny lines. Obfuscation failed to overcome the genuine slapstick in the organ scene of the first...
Except for the lead, the Poets' actors did well by Houghton. Lucy Stone is a magnificent comedienne. While she's no Giulietta Masina, she was the only member of the cast (this may reflect on director Maurice Breslow) who fully appreciated the slapstick possibilities of the play. Jerry Vermilye's competence as Peter was unfailing, and Raye Bush as Mrs. Mallow, the old lady who repays Peter's charity, handled a fairly banal character interestingly. But William Hillier's portrayal of Bill detracted greatly from the whole production. It would be impossible to say he didn't develop his part...
Silents Please (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Episodes from the slapstick films of Mack Sennett...
...truly provocative work well staged by Gene Frankel, The Blacks can be poetic, caustic, slapstick, can startle, puzzle, perturb. And Genet, in going back to the ritual origins of theater as a way of going beyond its modern routine conventions, achieves startling effects. But he pays a pretty steep price for them, either through a self-defeating technique or through an insufficiently mastered one. For, unable to advance through plot, The Blacks can only assault through repetition. True ritual serves well-defined occasions; "ritual'' here is stretched out to meet a varying host of demands. The shocking, never...