Word: zelman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...parallel story line, Janie's best friend Harriet Cornwall (Sumalee Gunanukorn), a Harvard M.B.A., climbs the corporate ladder at Colgate-Palmolive while she is sleeping with her boss's boss, Paul Stuart, who is married. Paul (Aaron Zelman) is suitably unctuous. Harriet is ambitious and serves well as the straight woman for many of the jokes on Yiddish pronunciation that had the Loeb Ex audience laughing out loud at the play. Claire Ellis turns in a convincing performance as the corporate achiever Lillian Cornwall, Harriet's motn. Bill Selig and Mark Fish were both serviceable in their supporting roles...
...plot--or at least the reasonable facsimile thereof--thickens. Grump is backing his own babe, Delia Cards (Aaron Zelman), the thoroughly corrupt golddigger with whom he sings "It's Good to Be Evil." (Sample lyrics: "Being kind is kinda stupid/ Being just is just as dumb.") So Grump tries to blackmail the pageant's judges: Wyatt Stinksinhere (a Yosemite Sam parody played by Michael Rosenbaum), Austin Tation (a Don King parody played by Todd Kessler) and Ali Caneet (a Muhammad Ali parody played by Skip Sneeringer...
Ophelia Bottoms (Jason Tomarken) is engaged to marry Sir Cumference (you guessed it; he's fat), although Ophelia hates her round suitor. Meanwhile her aunt, Lady Andatramp (Michael Starr) is plotting for her own daughter, Jane Eyrehead (Glenn Kaiser) to catch the rich bachelor. But Sir Cumference (Daniel Zelman) is only rich because he drove Ophelia's brother, Captain Acaje (Andrew Dietderich), crazy and so stands to inherit the Bottoms' family fortune and estate...
...small cast responds superbly. Zelman's earnest, whole-heartedness never falters. He, in stiff-legged seaman awkwardness, is always believable, always endearing. He straightforwardly delivers lines like, "We could not be closer to the sea without drowning in it," unaware of their humor. His coastal Irish accent is well done, and his movements and expressions never betray that he is anyone other than a plain fisherman who loves the sea as much as he loves Timothea...
Much of acting is reacting, and though Zelman and Gunn are independently talented actors, their dynamics are what make the show better than just good. We sense the love between them, the electric sexual tension of their first real meeting, and the awkwardness of their first sexual encounter are all genuine...