Word: stoppard
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...Stoppard...
...Stoppard is a rabbit breeder of words-button-tailed, twitchy-nosed, big-eared, bright-eyed and always on the hop. Onstage, words do lead to talk, too much talk, perhaps, in this play, but much of it is exhilaratingly Shavian. In the new guise of a didact, Stoppard comes out for a free press ("Information is light...
Davis Hall delivers Arthur's monologue, a 25-minute anthology of cliches about America, with more spirit than technique. This sequence can be one of Stoppard's funniest; its droning tour through Hollywood images of American cities in the '30s, with recaps in every train station, ought to build from a slow start to demonic possession. Hall starts off with too much energy, and, unable to add more, resorts to flailing his arms to hold the audience's attention...
...Found-Land, Stoppard's play-within-a-play, both the author and the performers are in better form. New-Found-Land is in some ways even more of a trifle than Dirty Linen--it's essentially two monologues, one delivered by a senile minister about his youthful meeting with Lloyd George, the other by a young civil servant about his dreams of America. John Straub as Bernard, the codger, steals the show with simple, somnolent nods of his head--a note of comic understatement other members of BARC could learn from...
BETWEEN DIRTY LINEN and New-Found-Land, Stoppard has managed to fill out an evening of theater, even to make it entertaining. But there's so much more to expect from the author of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It's a bit sad to see a man who challenged Shakespeare to verbal duels wasting his time pulling blue panties out of his characters' pockets...