Word: theater
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...THEATER...
...dray horse, faithfully clopping to the fadeout. The Informer was consistently Irish. If Up Tight's cast is Negro, the script is in straight blackface, with such lines as "Nonviolence is a self-defeating mother." Its bogus climaxes are reminiscent of the '30s' group-theater lyricism, as when Tank wails at a smeltery, "You noisy beautiful bastard, remember me?", or when he roars, "The city is killing me ... it's killing both of us." Because Up Tight was filmed in the ghetto of Cleveland, it occasionally rings true, like a quarter in a handful of slugs...
...theater lights dim. The audience hushes. It is that tingling, anticipatory moment before the curtain rises. Suddenly, bouzouki music shreds the air, and in orchestra seat D-113 Jean Kerr says with a trace of apprehension: "Sounds like we are back at Zorbd." The fear proves groundless. True, the initial setting is Greece, but the play, Forty Carats, is a frothy French farce from Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy, the team that wrote Cactus Flower. It is a comedy of new marital modes and manners, precisely the sort of show that people always say they want...
...Preacher-Teachers. Like Christ, he preaches to publicans and sinners, synonyms for playgoers. All the preacher-teacher-playwrights - Ibsen, Shaw, Arthur Miller-are gluttons for sinners. They want converts streaming up the aisles to purify the world. They are all moral abolitionists who, despite their obvious love of the theater, confuse drama with reform and statecraft. They write Plays to Abolish Things By-poverty, prejudice, war, injustice, capitalism, moral obliquity. This is the dramatic form of preventive medicine, and it has never averted a single plague that mankind is heir...
Ideally, a parody should be: 1) funny about its subject matter, 2) funny in its own right, and 3) funny but not unfriendly. Dames at Sea, at Manhattan's Bouwerie Lane Theater, manages to be all three-with a bonus of three thoroughly engaging stars and some of the most ingenious staging currently on or off Broadway...