Word: swann
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Drop of Another Hat brings Michael Flanders and Donald Swann back to Broadway, for the first time since 1960, in a sprightly Mardi Gras of hilarity. These two Britons are suave, witty, sly, jaunty and civilized; as comics, their mastery of timing would shame a Swiss watch...
Clerk to Cook. According to Subcommittee Chairman Wayne Hays of Ohio, the sessions revealed irregularities aplenty. There was, for example, the peculiar case of the 22 travel credit cards held by Powell-committee staffers. Mrs. Emma Swann, a committee receptionist whose name appeared on vouchers for 20 trips, testified that she had made only three of them - and that they were to Miami for "sightseeing and shopping." Russell Derrickson, staff director of Powell's panel, denied making any of the 26 trips charged to his name. Odell Clark, the committee's chief investigator, was unable to explain...
When Flanders & Swann dropped their first hat in the States, I was still lolling under the appleboughs. (Was Eisenhower president then?) There seemed to me no one more laughworthy in those days -- except maybe Jules Feiffer. Next to Bernard Mergendieler, no comic creation was "righter" than Flanders' young cannibal who decided, one day, that "eatin' people is wrong." Well, I guess I thought George Gobel was pretty funny...
...Gobel is selling pork and beans. Feiffer has stayed just the same -- perhaps I've come to resent him some for that stagnation -- and behold, those Limeys come back, and they haven't changed either. Michael Flanders, archetype of Shavian urbanity (imagine Peter Ustinov impersonating Tom Lehrer), and Donald Swann, a mad leprechaun escaped from some Little Men's Chowder & Marching Society (imagine Arthur Schlesinger impersonating Peter Pan) still jesting and warbling about Wilson and De Gaulle, dieting and astrology, parking problems and fixit-men. They are topical satirists, yes, and still provide a wonderfully pleasant show, but they might...
...Bomb," an abstracted menace, to be sure, is close as Flanders & Swann come to confronting the sixties; it is not terribly unlike "The Ostrich," in a fable from their own bestiary, who cools his head in the sand while the world goes to the devil. This is not to imply that we world goes to the devil. This is not to imply that we would have them sing to us of Vietnam or MLF or race riots. They are too droll, melodious, and genteel to be militant -- or even engage -- and evenings with them will always have that reassuring quality...