Word: stopper
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...dance number of staggering virtuosity whose best parts don't really begin until the song itself is over. It's all in the encores. What looks on paper and sounds on recordings like a fairly tedious number becomes the high point of the performance, a real show-stopper...
Reggie, my boy, keep it moving and keep it swinging. You've got the world in a jug and the stopper's in your hand...
...Alive and Well and Living in Paris suggests a similar means of torture. Imagine being imprisoned for life inside one of those actively gloomy cabarets where the only entertainment is French popular music. Whatever the glories of France, popular music was never among them. Whether ballad or brassy show-stopper or (deliver us) rock 'n' roll, every French pop song sounds as if it is being pulled out of an accordion. Those who cannot imagine what the ordeal might be like but are still curious should check out Jacques Brel. Others might well beware...
Donen has animated the songs with great skill, and knows exactly how and when to play a number big, and at just what point simplicity will best carry it. There is at least one show-stopper-a song and dance by a snake which, quite appropriately, is inclined toward sibilance-and a sequence of unadorned magic, when the pilot folds a piece of paper into a megaphone and croons a wistful ballad, '20s style...
...headway, however, let alone "change the face of British politics," as Thorpe had promised. "The country is going down the drain, and they are squabbling about the size of the plughole," the Liberal leader complained, but he failed to offer an alternative that many voters considered a sure drain stopper...