Word: slapstick
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...musical was adapted by ART artistic director Robert Brustein from a children's story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. But the adaptation is neither sharp nor captivating-instead it relies heavily on slapstick gags and cheap one-line jokes to drag its way through a simple story. Singer's morality tale here is not expanded or satirized; rather, it is presented and left to lie like cold chicken soup, sans matzoh balls, vegetables or even chicken. The adaptation fails to challenge the audience in the slightest, and is not even successful in its irreverence. Much of 'Shlemiel' simply insults both...
What does shine through, however, is the actors' energy and the fast-paced humor racing through the show, even if it is mainly slapstick. The production is worth seeing for the prologue alone--Erik Amblad '99 and Chuck O'Toole '97 in particular draw screams of laughter from the audience with their girlish giggles. Everyone's costumes are a hoot, from the prologue's two-sizes-too-small jogging suits to the servants' funky get-ups. Again, once the actual story begins, some of the more original artistic concepts are sacrificed in favor of both Shakespearean traditions and basic silliness...
...latest and one of the funniest of these vengeful academic burlesques is Richard Russo's Straight Man (Random House; 391 pages; $25). Russo, a former professor at Colby College in Maine and author of The Risk Pool and Nobody's Fool, commences his slapstick when William Henry Devereaux Jr., creative-writing teacher and chairman of the English department at an obscure Pennsylvania college, makes a slighting remark about a colleague's poetry. She whacks him across the face with a notebook, and the metal coil hooks his nose...
...Parker's stories was lost. Although the actors made their characters pleasant and witty company for the evening, they all ended up seeming two-dimensional. Some of the cast members had their best and most believable moments when their characters were drunk, a condition that invites broader and more slapstick humor. Shar VanBoskirk '97 was hilarious as Lily Wynton, an aging movie star who likes brandy after breakfast...
...evening belongs to Nuccio, the ever-slick sorcerer who with one raised eyebrow can send chills down anyone's back. Without ever resorting to melodrama or slapstick comedy, Nuccio gives a performance that is as funny as it is frightening. His dry subtlety sparks laughter from almost everyone yet his mere presence casts an ominous shadow across the stage. His voice may not be as musically powerful as some of the cast's, but he has the power to enunciate and, most importantly, act, which more than makes up for his minor shortcomings as a singer. By the time...