Word: witness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...author of the much honored The Great War and Modern Memory is not out to win votes. His aim is to offend, mainly the middle class, and to decry the decline of culture and taste. He succeeds, with considerable wit and a fine malice, but it is hard to take him seriously. Having revealed the stratagems and pretensions of everyone able and willing to read his book, Fussell emerges as an upscale bohemian. His ideal social category is the "X" class, a cosmopolitan elite who speak several languages, drink excellent cheap wine, never have to be at work on time...
...film presentation with Eisenhower, Johnson sees the face of a Russian scientist and drawls. "Get that moron off of there," with the most extended moron this side of Gomer Pyle. Moffat's characterization, or rather caricature, elicits a laugh or two, but The Right Stuff's otherwise steady wit makes such heavy-handed jabs unnecessary...
...exceptional: as the artist's devoted wife, a woman so blind to her husband's sins that she might easily seem pathetic, Martha Henry radiates strength, grace and throbbing-voiced appeal. In Dilemma's other exacting role, Brent Carver finds the scapegrace charm and wit of the dying young artist but just misses the offhand incandescence that would fit the repeated description of him as a genius. Phillips has acted the part himself, to acclaim, and knows that the character's simultaneous power to seduce and appall an audience is vital to the play...
...sprinting, leaping at nearly every conventional conservative ideal no high jump, sailing and skiing no discus throw, and inheriting a large cache from his oil baron father no hurdle race. No matter what his elegant prose, no matter how frequent his careful evidence citations, no matter what his wit and charm, I cannot but recall registering to vote with my close friend. "Listen, C. J.," he told me, "let's register Republican: that means you want to keep your pool and I want to keep my Porsche...
ONLY A FINE LINE divides amateur and professional theater, and the Boston Shakespeare Company's season premiere, Pericles, makes this woefully clear. Though this production has some innovation, drama, and wit, more often it is confused, contrived, disjointed and dull. Peter Sellars '80 and his troupe enthusiastically embrace their material, but they do so with little vitality and less virtuosity. For someone of Sellars' demonstrated skills, knowledge and insights, Pericles comes as a marked disappointment...