Word: witness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...conditions that brought different immigrant populations to the New World and their adaptation to its opportunities and frustrations objectively. To a large extent, he succeeds, for what he sacrifices in passion and fury, he compensates with the conviction of his honesty. What his narrative loses in style and wit--Sowell's is a turgid, textbook monotone--he gains in clarity and precision. "The history of American ethnic groups," says Sowell, "is the history of a complex aggregate of complex groups and individuals. It cannot be a simple morality play." He seeks to explain events from their causes...
...Eyen's cliched book and lyrics lack the wit and satiric bite that infused his Mary Hartman scripts. With lines like "Show business is a rough business, and it is a business," we feel we're watching a 1930s movie musical in technicolor with Bennett trying to do a Busby Berkeley turn. The choreography here however, lacks flair, Henry Krieger's music is a mediocre imitation of the '60s sound, and this extended, boring production reduces the audience to waiting for the girls' next costume change in their $1.5 million wardrobe...
Beyond its wit, the language of Riddley Walker haunts and challenges in a way that English cannot. Where English is insufficient, Hoban simply invents penetrating new words. The gnawing sensation of terror inside the stomach is the "fearbelly"; both the sight and sound of an angry dog are expressed by "grooling and smarling...
...Give us more Barbers," the mighty German is supposed to have advised the young Italian, and succeeding generations have endorsed Beethoven's opinion. The creator of Barber of Seville, La Cenerentola and L 'Italiana in Algeri is usually considered a deft musical comic whose work sparkles with wit and high spirits...
...conception My Dinner with André is interesting in a kind of off-off Broadway way. One can imagine trendy New York twittering about it for weeks - well, any way, days. And if the protagonists were, by nature, men of Shavian wit and intellectual range it might have worked. But they are merely fake profound, in the show biz manner. Their pose may be antitheatrical, but the pair are, in fact, theatrical in the very worst, or drama student, sense of the term...