Word: waltzed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Despite its name, Anniversary Waltz is neither a musical comedy nor a sentimental ditty about fifty years of happy marriage. The play does concern itself with marriage, however, but only incidentally with as anniversary. Any further resemblance to its musical namesake ends with the opening curtain. Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields have taken a wornout family comedy theme and used it to glue together a formidable number of jokes about six, child psychology, and television. They have written a farcical Date with Judy, funnier than its television counterparts but a little pointless for two hours in the theatre...
With authors Chodorov and Fields employing almost every stock comedy angle, the case has no alternative but to play the comedian continually. The typical American family of Anniversary Waltz represents an inconceivable collection of wits, from the husband to the handyman. The play races along through jokes and slapstick with no member of the cast willing o able to take a straight man part. It leaves the audience limp after able to take a straight man part. It leaves the audience limp after one act and pondering the question of which party, authors or cast, can keep up the pace...
...playing nearly every stock angle, Anniversary Waltz works for its humor at an exhausting pace. It would be surprising if the play failed to produce some extremely funny moments. The odds are for it. And because of its bright spots, the odds also favor the play with moderately successful prospects...
...Christmas night dream, the grownups took over. In Act II came the company's stars, one after the other, to dance through Clara's dream. Among them were Maria Tallchief as the Sugar Plum Fairy, Nicholas Magallanes as her Cavalier, and Tanaquil LeClercq as the Dewdrop (Waltz of the Flowers}; Francisco Moncion undulated through an antic Arabian Dance...
...itself up out of the floor branch by bigger branch until its top disappeared in the flies. The window of the room broadened and heightened until the scene passed through it, outdoors into a snow-smothered pine forest, and a realistic blizzard of white confetti blew on the Snowflake Waltz. When the curtain fell, first-nighters broke into happy, rousing applause. After a dozen curtain calls for the cast, Choreographer Balanchine came out for a slightly embarrassed bow himself: he had not bothered to wear a necktie that night...