Word: slapsticker
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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HIGH SPIRITS. As a spirit brought back to haunt her husband by means of a slapstick séance conducted by mad Bea Lillie, impish Tammy Grimes is about as ghostly grey as a rainbow...
...having refused to wed Dean Martin because he is a tycoon, Shirley marries Dick Van Dyke, a philosophical hardware merchant who has exactly what she wants - nothing. "Our life together was just like an old silent movie," says Shirley. Which cues in some grainy black-and-white footage -a slapstick idyl with speeded-up action. The idyl jerks to a stop when Van Dyke throws away his Thoreau and proceeds to make a mint. "A little hard work never killed anybody," he insists. Soon he drops dead, leaving Shirley sadder but richer, and free for Husband...
...Polonius, as Hume Cronyn sees him, is a buffoon, who turns most of his scenes with Hamlet into slapstick comedy. Cronyn wrings from the part all the humor that is there and a good deal, I think, that is not. He is Polonius from Hamlet's point of view, a "tedious old fool," without a trace of the skilled counselor who had been invaluable to Denmark...
Machiavelli and the typical Jewish usurer convey little to a modern audience, however, and the play needs a touch of the ham to be saved from mediocrity. The actors play slapstick so well that the production's one weak moment is an off-spring of their own success. In the last act, Barabas gets caught in his own plot and sinks to a painful death in a "deep pit past recovery." His wile has betrayed him, and his snarling vengeance ("Damn'd Christians, dogs, and Turkish Infidels,") echoes across the stage. Having avoided the serious side of Barabas' treachery until...
High spirits, deft wit and an elegantly sketched stage mark Amis' comic theater; the face-pullings, pratfalls and brisk tattoo of slapstick are the devices of a master. His aim is serious comedy. And, like the skewered and flayed Englishman of the fable, it never hurts except when he laughs...