Word: absurdist
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...This is street slang refined and extended into the surreal, the baroque, the abrasive, the lyrical. And as spoken in blazing ricochet rhythms by his energized septet of actors-especially Mantegna, Prosky and Lane Smith as a harried customer who comes close to emotional collapse-Mamet's absurdist riffs almost make sense...
Chayes describes the assassination as "a demonstration of the absurdist view of life." The sudden killing of a President graced with youth, education, and charm meant "nothing in the world can be stable," he comments...
...selected Plays demonstrate, Kleist was the first great absurdist, obsessed with justice and the black-comic ways in which it can miscarry. The Broken Pitcher centers on a judge who is also a malefactor; in Amphitryon, the great Theban commander rages against an impostor "who wants me . .. out of the fortress of my consciousness." This sense of self as an armed camp is one of many traits that make the playwright seem a contemporary of another great admirer, Bertolt Brecht...
Another trap in Stoppard's play is the confining of rich, mock-Elizabethan dialogue to a spare, absurdist setting--as critics have pointed out, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern draws heavily from Samuel Beckett's style. But director Kaplan perhaps tips the scales too heavily toward the absurd tradition. The stark stage, the sparse furniture are all there, and rightly so. But the Shakespearean tradition is just as important: Stoppard includes sizable chunks from Hamlet, and his own words show a penchant for language tricks...
...removal of Bloom Country suggests that the transition from the safe and complacent liberalism of Garry Trudeau to Berke Breathed's absurdist anarchy was a more radical departure that The Crimson was willing to accept for long...