Word: verbally
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Self-anointed revolutionaries and other theoreticians have tried throughout this century to make the theater esoteric and archetypal, depicting a delirious dreamscape, an incantatory religious ritual, a shower of aimless verbal fireworks or perhaps a murmured hint of psychotic menace. Too often setting such moods has been an end in itself rather than a means to what satisfies audiences: telling a coherent, affecting story. In the effort to avoid being old-fashioned, to prove that the stage has an authentic voice beyond the naturalism commonly found in film and TV, theater directors often turn their backs on narrative...
This successful conspiracy between author and audience works best in the evanescent pages of a daily newspaper. Packed lead to kicker in book form, Buchwald's formula whimsy loses much of its punch. Verbal skits about Geraldine Ferraro, Michael Jackson, the President, home-computer miseries, the Pope and Cabbage Patch dolls now read like shots in the dark. Yet this and previous collections of the journalist's craft may one day enjoy new life. Buchwald's job is to repeat history as farce faster than one can say Karl Marx. To the patient reader, farce inevitably returns as nostalgia...
...bottom of every Warner Bros. memo sheet was a routine injunction that said, "Verbal messages cause misunderstanding and delays (please put them in writing)." And put them in writing they did, the most star-studded list of memo writers in movie history: the Warner brothers themselves; producers, directors and writers; and a roster of stars that included Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn and George Raft. The best of those tens of thousands of messages have now been collected by Film Historian Rudy Behlmer, whose Inside Warner Bros. (1935-1951) (Viking; $19.95) is, to any fan of film, an open...
...President hurls verbal instead of military firepower at the alleged source of terrorist raids on airports. After the biggest U.S. military buildup in history, a new budget-balancing law may force a record Pentagon cutback. A South Carolina killer is executed for a murder he committed as a teenager, and 31 prisoners are held on death row for juvenile crimes...
...seek most, a measure of power. Her childhood disillusioned her. But whose childhood does not? Her adult life was not marred by more than the normal share of grief. Only the ordeal of Hammett's last illness makes her vulnerable enough for an audience to like, despite the verbal savagery that she hurled at almost everyone she knew. The decision to present Hellman in a two-hour monologue provides a further emotional advantage: because her targets are not visible, spectators can savor the pith and vinegar of her language rather than cringe at its impact on the victims...