Word: slapstickers
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...SLAPSTICK JUST DOESN'T WORK unless it's performed by people who can make you believe they are in continuous conflict with the physical world--anti-ballerinas, losing the battle to gravity. It's monstrously difficult to pull off, and hardly worth the trouble for all but the most natural clowns. No one in The Three Cuckolds betrays any flair for knockabout comedy, so it's hard to understand why the director. Michael S. E. Kaplan, chose to haul out this tedious commedia del l'arte piece and stage it, of all places, on the Loeb Mainstage, which swallows...
Commedia del l'arte is renowned for its blend of spontaneity and old hat--stock characters, stock situations, stock slapstick bits continually reshaped according to the whims of its experienced performers and the peculiarities of the audience and the space. At the beginning of this production, when the actors lug in part of the set, throwing out lines like. "Anybody I know out there?" and "Small house tonight," they establish a quick and funny rapport with the audience. Then the "ad-libs" cease and the show sobers up. Great--sober commedia del l'arte by inexperienced actors on the Loeb...
...viewer is likely to smile along too, until Woman invades Cheech and Chong territory for stock comic complications and a slapstick climax. By film's end, the viewer's hopes have shrunk along with wee Lily. The razzle-dazzle finale - and a barrage of TV commercials and guest appearances by Tomlin and Co-Star Charles Grodin - may be working...
Censorship can, and often does, lead into absurdity, though not often slapstick absurdity like the New Jersey legislature achieved in the 1960s when it enacted a subsequently vetoed antiobscenity bill so explicit that it was deemed too dirty to be read in the legislative chambers without clearing out the public first. The mother in Whiteville, N.C., who demanded that the Columbus County library keep adult books out of the hands of children later discovered that her own daughter had thereby been made ineligible to check out the Bible. One group, a Florida organization called Save Our Children, has simplified...
...African nation with rich uranium deposits). When Newhart meets the Gormese, the two men cannot understand each other, which makes for five minutes of ennui. They are not the only odd couple in the film. In scene after scene, behavioral comedy attempts to engage in a dialogue with slapstick satire. But these are different comic languages, and the two forms finally fall silent in defeat. Maybe Henry should appear on TV less and watch it more. Any episode of M*A*S*H, Taxi or The Muppet Show has more laughs and pathos per minute than this impeachable farce...