Word: witness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...phenomenal popularity of dance has made sophisticates of the most provincial audiences. Yet even in New York City, epicenter of the modern movement, the 27-year-old Taylor company has retained its power to astonish. At the City Center the dancers are currently providing evening after evening of crackling wit and virtuosity under the hand of a master...
Baker's political savvy is disguised by the disarming aura he creates with his self-deprecating wit. He tells of talking with Paul Volcker about towering interest rates and realizing that they might not seem so high to the 6-ft. 7-in. chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. The solution, puckishly suggested Baker (who stands all of 5 ft. 7 in.), is to have shorter men in important positions. His humor helps him to avoid the arrogance that tends to accompany power. He is genuinely well liked, by Democrats as well as Republicans. "When you see him coming...
...major painter? Of course not; he is a salon wit. Cliche piles on cliche...
NOEL COWARD'S WORLD is a preppy paradise, in which the black evening gowns and white dinner jackets seem to have a life of their own. The collectibles sprinkled around the room exude rechereche. The omnipresent martinis are dry, and the wit drier still. Throughout, the predominant emotion is a practiced bitchiness. "Elvira is about as trusting as a puff adder," Ruth tells Charles. The mousse at dinner "looked a bit hysterical, but it tasted delightful," Charles tells Ruth. Why any of them puts up with the others no one seems to know...
BROWN'S UNDERLYING INNOVATION is simple but endlessly affecting: She has treated Gilbert's characters as complex, believable, human beings--not the wit-spouting, blissed-out caricatures that have appealed to audiences for more than a century. The female chorus that sings the opening number--a song about their collective love for two gondoliers--is not the usual band of cheerful automotons: they are genuinely smitten, languishing distractedly about the stage and staring into the air. When the inevitable pairing off of male and female choruses takes place, it is no hand-holding affair--they behave...