Word: verbalism
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Kahane's success in garnering headlines is a case-study in pre-packaged controversy. Every hate-monger carries a briefcase full of stock accusations, violent rhetoric and incendiary tactics. His first task is to find new situations to unleash his verbal barrage. Creating a pretense, however, is necessary but not sufficient. He must also convince people in the media that the alleged provocation and his resulting fury are worthy of coverage...
...Soviets, he guesses that it would be cheaper and more devastating to drop money on them, not bombs. And Congress, he goes on, Congress should have to rescind some old law every time it passes a new one, to make room. Ordinary stuff is Rooney's beat, with no verbal slickery: how doctors can do a heart bypass but not cure a 101 degrees fever, and why do clothing manufacturers put all those pins in new shirts? There is no dazzler at the end; he just stops talking, smiles and waves. The reader is warmed by the happy illusion that...
...sway and Peter Friedman as an austere Scot who spends years resisting it. Countryman portrays the sort of unflashy youth who hangs around his brighter classmates but inevitably is relegated to the business chores -- for which he demonstrates an acumen far better suited to adult life than their verbal fireworks. The slow ripening of his self- confidence and, therefore, his sexuality provides the play's time line, establishing the passage of nearly two decades. Friedman enacts a troubled homosexual whose bent is not the source of his self-destruction: he insists on confronting, and voicing, life's unpleasant truths, which...
...play could have been about truck drivers. You would still have the natural leader, the clown, the one who is quietly loyal, the one who knows that the best of himself will never be expressed." Truck drivers would not talk so gracefully or inhabit a world in which verbal violence is commonplace and bursts of physical violence so shocking. But in its evocation of the judgmental and forgiving ways of friendship -- of how a long acquaintance enables people to divine and condone each other's darkest secrets -- The Common Pursuit does indeed portray what is common in all humanity...
Gelber's straightforward direction showcases Stoppard's sharp verbal exchanges and dazzling wordplay. He and Watson make a fine team, both of them endearing in their pathetic plight. And but for a few swallowed lines, the supporting cast keeps the inspiring lunacy going at a quick, clever pace. Stoppard's stock of metaphysical puns and absurd rhetoric of despair flies so fast that they rarely become over-bearing. From all sides of the coin, a spirited showing for two of the Bard's interchangeable bit players...