Word: witting
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Nikita Khrushchev may write shorter letters than Bulganin, but he talks longer, oftener, and with more asides, anecdotes, wit and rhetorical questions than any other head of state. Last week, back in Moscow from eight days of spellbinding in Hungary, Khrushchev mounted a rostrum in Luzhniki Sports Palace, apologized for a strained throat, and then went at it for 45 minutes, getting more laughs and a bigger hand from his hometown audience than he got for all of his speechifying before numbed Hungarians...
Most Likely . . . (Dick Johnson, with Dave McKenna, piano; Wilbur Ware, bass; "Philly" Joe Jones, drums; Riverside). An alto saxophonist with wit and a springy, willow-green reed sound, Johnson bounces through a few of his own sunny fancies (Aw C'mon Hoss, Me 'n' Dave), gives fresh nuances to some twilit standards (It's So Peaceful in the Country, The End of a Love Affair). Among his best: a gusty frolic called Lee-Antics, which rings its intricate changes with geysering exuberance, builds to a stunning solo flight on the drums...
...than 10,000 first nights, no onstage exits were as important as the abrupt, deadpan departures of Critic George Jean Nathan from his aisle seat. If that departure came (as it did all too often) at the end of the second act, financial disaster loomed ahead. For his abrasive wit in demolishing flimflam and fraud, his impish pride in prejudice, and not least for his ability to hone a sharper line than most of the playwrights he panned, slight (5 ft. 7 in., 130 1bs.), white-thatched First Nighter Nathan was one of Broadway's most feared and lonely...
...Joyce Grenfell, 48, stumbled onstage by accident in 1939 as a sideline to a happy career as wife (to Mine Director Reginald Grenfell), a radio critic for the Observer, and sometime writer for Punch. She was dragooned into a London revue after a party performance. She later collaborated with Wit Stephen (Gamesmanship) Potter on BBC comedies, by 1955 had played outstanding bits in movies (Genevieve, The Belles of St. Trinian's) and her first solo revue in London...
...approaching a form, which is extremely difficult to handle well, the composer has added to his problem by choosing to satirize the very form of opera buffa itself. The result is a complete triumph. Using his modest orchestra with facility and great wit, and demonstrating a sensitive awareness of the comic possibilities of vocal writing, Mr. Perkins has composed a score which is fully as funny as the satiric libretto by Wayne Shirley...