Word: witnessed
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Ambulance. Rudi Bing has not worked his cures by coddling the singers or anyone else. His policy from the first has been "firmness-sympathy but firmness." Says one singer: "Bing is the boss. He knows it and makes everyone else know it." But the Bing firmness is tempered with wit, and even touches of slapstick. One sample last fall: when he suspected that the "illness" of one of his tenors was chiefly laziness, he rushed two doctors and an ambulance to the tenor's door in burlesque solicitude. Says Bing in his caramel-soft Viennese-British accent: "He sang...
...Trio," the audience is treated to these three Maugham standards, but that is not all, as if more is necessary. The third story, "Sanatorium" has not only the Maugham requisites but it is also sentimental, as is "The Kites" in "Quartet." Sentimentality is inconsistent with either Maugham's wit or characterization...
Characterization and wit set an audience apart from the players; it can afford to look at the players objectively, since their idyosyncrasies are to be laughed at, not pitied, and their conscious humor to be enjoyed. For the audience, there is no possible emotional involvement with Maugham characters; they are on display only. Thus, when Maugham introduces a sentimental romance between TB victims in "Sanatorium," the audience is uncomfortable, as all along it has been concerned with characters and not with tormented souls. An audience must be in a sentimental mood before tears can be shed...
...during the past year can fail to admire his steady, cold-steel nerve. He has held himself aloof from the brawling. His staff know him as calm, sane, considerate. He has generally kept his sense of humor in a turbulent world, sometimes opens a window on a frosty wit...
Concluding, by Henry Green. Goings-on at a girls' school in England; examined with grace and wit by one of England's most talented novelists (TIME...