Word: slapstickers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Artifice & Nature. Virginia's new Watteau dates from the period when he had first found his own formula for combining artifice with nature. For it was not in the mincing, grandiloquent French courtiers that Watteau found his prototypes but from among the mocking, high-spirited, slapstick players of the Italian Commedia dell'Arte. By placing them against the superb park landscapes he sketched in and around Paris, Watteau created a half-make-believe world of his own that paid homage to nothing but his own poetic imagination...
...beard, and Bing Crosby with a full head of hair. Sound effects have been dubbed in expertly, and the old-timers are consistently hilarious. As a matter of fact, the present-day Steve Allen is plainly overwhelmed. His comic narration serves mainly to illustrate how much the art of slapstick has declined in the past two decades...
...Lucy Barry's adaptation of the old tale with bright, colloquial dialogue, sprightly music, and some very funny, original characterizations. The result, skillfully directed by Don Adams, is a warm-hearted, fast-paced spectacle of childish confusion and adult good fun. The play's facetious lines and well-tempered slapstick will undoubtedly appeal to sophisticated audiences; one hopes that the youngsters will be equally amused...
...Earle Edgerton and Margaret Groome, as Sir Fox and Madame Cat, work together hand in glove. Their nonchalance and dastard evil, dispelled at the end when they too become human, are lustily executed. J.D. Shucter as Gepetto the puppetmaker, peers with great authority through horn rims, though his early slapstick might appear a trifle strained. Marc Brugnoni's Sandwich Man is marvelously rakish and sly, but no one ever gets really scared, for his unctuousness naturally makes him more humorous than frightening. Blue Fairy's role is difficult in the presence of such raucous other characters. Louise Greep...
...slapstick is a theatrical narcotic, and both Wilder and director Tyrone Guthric almost inhale too much of the stuff. Having written the play expressly for Ruth Gordon in the role of Mrs. Levi, the author has given her too many lines that depend on dialect alone. Guthrie has compounded the peccadillo by letting Miss Gordon maintain her rasping voice too loud for too much of the time. The result, especially when Loring Smith is sharing the scene as the booming and gesticulating Vandergelder, is a shouting match that numbs the audience and detracts from those scenes wherein pandemonium reigns legitimately...