Word: stew
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Sequestering incompatible people on islands, in hotels or at roadside hash houses under duress is one of the hoariest devices known to drama. Vide, The Admirable Crichton, Grand Hotel and The Petrified Forest. The notion is that some transcendent revelation will descend on these characters as they sit and stew. The only revelation to be gleaned from the bulk of Lanford Wilson's plays, starting with The Hot I Baltimore, is that his characters are circusy clones of people originally conceived by William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams and William Inge. Their common plaint is that life has failed them, whereas...
...skillful balance of genre painting and cartooning keeps this whole stew surprisingly fresh Say Goodbye succeeds by not taking itself seriously by self-consciously laying it on thick in words, music, and action. But this is no Hasty Pudding Show of unceasing parody; the satire in Say Goodbye is sympathetic, knowing, and often cedes to real drama, suspense, and romance. The characters may be stock, but they are imaginative, well-rounded versions of old standards...
...talking Alex. As Patti, however, Ann-Margaret is listless; she seems to have given up on trying to inject any energy into here role. Of course, the script never gives her a chance: Patti's character is merely a contrivance of the plot--an extra ingredient thrown into the stew to provide an attractive diversion from the rather bland main course...
...fine character actors, but in this case, we've seen the characters too often before. Most of them are in the well-worn uptight-showbiz mold; the Yiddish momma schtick at Benjy's Brooklyn home is an excruciating parade of old cliches. Only one memorable move emerges from this stew of reheated vaudeville; when Benjy announces: "We Jews know about two things suffering, and where to get great Chinese food...
Iowa Beef, though, has often been an exception in many areas. In the early 1960s the company revolutionized the beef-packing industry with a new process for handling meat known as boxed beef. Cuts of everything from sirloin to stew meat were prepared right at the packinghouse plant and then shipped frozen, ready to cook, to retailers. Previously, all beef packers had shipped whole carcasses out to butchers, who cut the meat down to retail-size portions...