Word: wordplay
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Gelber's straightforward direction showcases Stoppard's sharp verbal exchanges and dazzling wordplay. He and Watson make a fine team, both of them endearing in their pathetic plight. And but for a few swallowed lines, the supporting cast keeps the inspiring lunacy going at a quick, clever pace. Stoppard's stock of metaphysical puns and absurd rhetoric of despair flies so fast that they rarely become over-bearing. From all sides of the coin, a spirited showing for two of the Bard's interchangeable bit players...
...with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that's a lot easier and it makes me free to say anything I want." As that self-analysis suggests, Sondheim's lyrics consistently reach past charm and wordplay (in which he delights) to become compact, emotive playlets. He composes not just songs but complexly interwoven suites. The tales his shows tell are almost all about loneliness, obsession and disillusionment--there is scarcely a happy love story in the lot --yet their honest grasp of human nature brings unexpected...
Love may well be life's most blinding obsession, but Colwin is so obsessed with her subject that for the first six of her eight stories she actually neglects the players. Flesh fades before wordplay as he, elegant in his tweed coat and paisley scarf, embraces her, a slob in worn corduroys and ratty sweater, on the way to the frowsy couch in Billy's study. Readers can scarcely hear Billy's battered loafers thud to the floor for the detonations of insights and definitions...
...Moscow from New York, Brezhnev had created a broader base of support. His power was becoming entrenched. Moscow jokesters were among the first to depict the attitude of the new leadership. Fedorenko told me a story that illustrated Brezhnev's power and the age-old Russian love of wordplay: A worker asked Brezhnev how to address him. He responded bashfully: "Just call me Ilyich." That was Brezhnev's patronymic--the same as Lenin's--and indicated that Brezhnev was far from bashful...
MARVEL at the spectacle of soldiery and swordsmanship in the decisive battle of Agincourt! THRILL as the victorious monarch woos and wins the fair Katharine - in two languages! It is all here, and more (including some of the loveliest wordplay in English or French). No wonder the play's Chorus poor-mouths the restrictions of the stage and the absence of "things/ Which cannot in their huge and proper life/ Be here presented." And no wonder that the definitive Henry V is Laurence Olivier's 1945 film version...