Word: vamping
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Classical drama requires elegant balance. So, for that matter, does farce. One way or another, then, it makes sense that this story began and now ends with Monica. The cartoon versions of her that dominated the past year--child-victim, stalker-vamp--threatened to reappear on Saturday, when we got to meet her at last, on videotape. But for all the artful editing by both sides, there was no concealing that a flesh-and-blood Monica Lewinsky really does exist after all. She talks, she hides, she teases, she thinks fast and explains, grounded and credible and well practiced after...
...picture of a career woman in her 20s who doesn't feel pretty enough and who fantasizes about life as a sexpot. "I'm never going to sleep/ with Martin Amis/ or anyone famous./ At twenty-one I scotched/my chance to be/one of the seductresses/of the century,/ a vamp on the rise through the ranks/ of literary Gods and military men,/ who wouldn't stop at the President:/ she'd take the Pentagon by storm/ in halter dress and rhinestone extras," Garrison writes in "An Idle Thought." (It could be retitled "Oh, How I Would Have Put You to Shame...
...Helen Hunt woman doesn't vamp. She has no outlaw swagger. She doesn't ratchet her I.Q. down 15 or 20 points to make the boys feel better. She refuses to play the little girl or the doomed diva. Or the perfect woman either, for she knows that flourishing at the end of this millennium is an art and a craft, and not many are up to it. But she has the grit to try. She attracts men, and appeals to other women, by being her own complicated self. Determined woman, staunch friend, strong mate: the sensible siren...
...schoolgirl uniforms--white blouses, hot pink neckties, suggestively tiny pleated skirts and hair in brilliant colors found nowhere in nature (Yamakawa's bright-blue bob must be seen to be believed)--the "little maids" combine in equal parts dizzy flirtatiousness, wide-eyed innocence and a hyper-sexualized tendency to vamp. The comedic effect, when contrasted with the stiffly suited business executives of the male chorus, is dazzling, and the introduction of the girls' chorus to the audience--the songs and dance surrounding "Three Little Maids From School Are We" and "Youth Must Have Its Fling" are uproarious--make clear...
Perhaps the greatest weakness of Your Own Thing is its disturbing and blatantly unpolished handling of the homoerotic themes of Twelfth Night. Whereas Twelfth Night skillfully raises questions about the nature of gender and love, in Your Own Thing, homoerotic love is merely a mistake. Olivia the vamp falls in love with Viola-as-Charlie purely by accident, and Sebastian-as-Charlie steps in soon enough (earlier than in Twelfth Night) to rescue Olivia from the realization that she was really in love with a girl. Orson becomes aware of Viola-as-Charlie's affection for him and paces across...