Word: slapsticker
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...Japanese. "Our computer graphics project that after only six years in the crossover program, Tito could become Toshino," he explains, "the quiet, well-dressed, manicured, well-groomed, somewhat anal-retentive overachiever who is ready to enter the job market at the drop of a dollar." The sketch takes a slapstick twist when the Crossover King, suffering a relapse into his Latin self, suddenly starts dancing and shouting Spanish phrases...
...quartet's acting has the rather juvenile exuberance of slapstick comedy. First, there's Frnakie (Dale Sandish). Unrivalled for the glossiness of his hair and the smoothness of his chin, he exclaims "Holy canolli!" in times of stress. As Smudge, a bathroom fixtures salesman by day and a bespectacled baritone by night, Jeff Bannon has so few facial expressions that he might as well have been stuffed. As Sparky, a stocky fellow who exudes good-guy looks, David Benoit is too jolly to be real. And Leo Daignault, playing Jinx, has the peculiar elfin charm of Andy Hardy...
...most of the romantic stuff is pretty dull. Much livelier -- and full of slapstick -- are chapters devoted to disaster: the hurricane that demolished her home; the auto accident that fractured her ankle. And there is one hysterical vision of a day spent weeding with David Lean. "It's absolutely no use," says Lean, "unless you get the root...
...skin peel off. Among the other characters: a husband of one sister, who has just been thawed out after four years frozen in the ice on Mount Everest, and a blind man who totals a laboratory with his cane in the most gratingly ill-conceived bit of TV slapstick of the year. Maybe ever...
Considering that this show runs for a grueling three hours, such fatigue is not surprising. This length is needless and avoidable. Director Cabranes-Grant should have kept the dialogue clipping along. Instead, the actors tend to linger over scenes of slapstick buffoonery. Both acts take an inordinately long time getting to the first line of dialogue, and the first act itself takes two hours to complete. If the pace of the play had been consistently faster, pauses would have contrasted more effectively and produced a stronger production...