Word: slapstickers
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...when they start making their first twenty or thirty thousand, people stop laughing at them. Unless, of course they can capitalize on their embarrassment and go professional. Since Charlie Chaplin turned the loser into a comic classic, some of the most successful comedians hit the bigtime on verbal slapstick. You laugh at Rodney Dangerfield (if you do) because he "don't get no respect." And you chuckle at Woody Allen because he's a Jewish...
Actually, Woddy Allen's formula is more sophisticated than just that. He generally takes some basic slapstick and Marx Brothers stuff, slathers it with the savoir-faire of the horny ethnic loser, and hurls the whole concoction into an unlikely context, usually the heroic fantasy world of the shlemeil. What he does is magnify the possibilities of the social banana peel. A Jewish herd blowing a date in the Bronx is one thing, but a Jewish herd posing as a Cuban dictator in bed with a sultry revolutionary who tells him he looks a lot like a Jewish herd...
Died. Moe Howard, 78, last survivor of the original Three Stooges slapstick comedy team; of lung cancer; in Hollywood. His black bangs cropped as if his barber had used a chamber pot, Moe cheerfully assaulted colleagues Larry, Curly and Shemp through more than 200 1930s farces, whacking them with mallets, tweaking noses, kicking shins, and deftly delivering thousands of the two-fingered eye punches that became his trademark, and endeared him in the 1950s to the first generation of television children...
...slant of Princess Ida because, like any G. and S. operetta, it is, after all, a period piece. And that is exactly how the play is handled in this production--which, thank God, doesn't try to get funny with any embarrassing 20th-century gimmickry. There are plenty of slapstick embellishments, but--from the opening blast of "God Save the Queen" to the fake 19th-century programs, this production remains true to the spirits of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan themselves...
...loose-ankled, slightly pigeon-toed walk, with his hands clasped tightly against his waist. The unworldly astonishment never fades from his pudgy face. A natty clerk displays an uninspiredly clever knack for his work that his pompous boss lacks, and briefly supplants the others with an act verging on slapstick. Fortunately, he reins the performance in before the proportions of his minor character become too inflated...