Word: trenchant
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...NISSAN "TOYS" Car ads were not generally driven by trenchant wit this year, but Nissan's spot amounted to topnotch satire of one of auto advertising's perennial themes: the right wheels always win you the babe. To the beat of Van Halen's You Really Got Me, a G.I. Joe look-alike leaves one playroom, hits the road for another in a sporty coupe and picks up a silver-lamed faux Barbie from her plastic manse. The crestfallen loser? A dull, preppie sort. The message? Drive Nissan...
Whether biting or benign, what these supposedly trenchant comebacks have in common is the roar of a phantom crowd; they always speak of other people having spoken them. It's as if they come with a built-in laugh track. And keeping us on track, they provoke in us click responses, the sort of electronic-entertainment reaction we twitch and jerk to more often lately. We hear Not even close, He's history or What's wrong with this picture?, and we immediately sense the power structure of the moment. In fact, we may subconsciously applaud such speakers because they...
...twins, or lovers, or while we're at it since I don't know how they're matched up either, figure skating partners, two halves of one thing, or two versions of the same thing?" He never comes to any sound conclusion, but he has plenty of amusingly trenchant insights along the way. "I don't think odd couples are advisable in nonsitcom life," Blue muses, "in situation reality, in science non-fiction." Getting Over Homer is as much a bittersweet love story as it is an homage to the epigram. And it is terrific on both counts...
Louisville's house star is the secretive, pseudonymous Jane Martin, who made her rep with the 1982 Talking With--11 trenchant monologues for women--and has since written eight plays for the ATL. Some think Martin is Jory, perhaps working with other writers; one actor who starred in a Martin play impishly hinted that the real author is George Stephanopoulos. This year's offering was Jack and Jill, an intimate, panoramic look at modern sexual inequality. The play neatly twists audience sympathies on a volatile subject. So did Martin's 1993 abortion play Keely and Du, which was nominated...
...socialized. Like Levi-Strauss recording folklore, Masters was preserving in writing an oral history that would have continued to transform itself over the years beyond recognition of its original form or died out altogether had he not interceded. How residents of Spoon River handled memory is the most trenchant aspect of the Nora Theater's current production...