Word: vulgarisms
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What follows is entirely predictable and unabashedly vulgar. Inhibitions must be left at the door. Alan Bennett, one of the quartet of Beyond the Fringe a decade ago, has constructed no more than a sloppy farce, but in Director Frank Dunlop's nimble hands it becomes an uproarious kaleidoscope of pratfalls. The Wicksteeds live in a world still superficially Victorian, but underneath there rage fires of frustration fed by the characters' anxiety that if an opportunity arises, their sexual equipment may be unequal to the occasion. Thus every double-entendre is not merely dirty but wistful. The cast...
...flesh but condemning him to death if an iota of blood be spilled in its excision, the reaction of the Venetians is such that it seems a cheap trick rather than a masterly example of a literalist hoist on his own petard. At this point Graziano alone expresses the vulgar view of what is going on; his taunts are, significantly, not echoed by anyone else. Yet here their silence condemns the bystanders; and the final touch to the mishandling of the scene comes when the Duke pronounces his pardon, snarling out forgiveness in a voice somewhere between Don Rickles...
...flaccid, middle-aged cop (Paul Suchecki) glibly compares the number of used cars in a lot to the quantity of hemorrhoids or crotch hairs he has. This tally isn't his only vulgar observation and surprisingly, they all slip by inoffensively. But Peter Fletcher's version of the naive cop doesn't jibe with his cohort's naturalness. His lithe, eager responses to the fat cop are always a little too slow in coming--his resemblance to an inept Stan Laurel fails to complement Suchecki's realistic performance...
...from 1876 to 1975, may be losing its global influence for the same reason that British industry, dominant in the world from 1776 to 1876, decayed. The threat comes from "industrophobia"-the mood among intellectuals, ecologists, students and others from the educated and monied classes, which view business as vulgar and dangerous. On U.S. campuses, he writes, an "antigrowth cult is being taught to a generation of idealistic kids as if it was high moral philosophy or even a religion...
...working toward a culmination, history is seen as purposeless. He worries that America's intellectual leaders are so "emancipated" from religion that spiritual questions are cloaked in secular terms like "national purpose." Thus discussion of public policy is "floundering in moral evasiveness and mendacity." Neuhaus scorns the "vulgar anti-Americanism" of many intellectuals and says that because they are divorced from the American experience, they feel no need to repent personally of the nation's sins...