Word: buffoonish
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Juan, Eva's rather buffoonish husband, Dean Shapiro is appropriately clownish. His funny, well-acted portrayal of Juan's weakness serves as a counterpoint to Eva's sheer determination. He carries off the part well, though his voice could be stronger. Andrew Dietderich deliberately overacts as the other foolish man in the show--Magaldi, Eva's first lover--and is quite amusing...
...Common Pursuit depicts five mismatched undergraduates at Cambridge (the British playwright's alma mater) who become intimates while putting out a literary magazine. Most of the story is their post-Cambridge life: two remain in academe, two share a publishing house and a paramour (Judy Geeson), and the most buffoonish (Nathan Lane) achieves the biggest success as a celebrity journalist. Theirs is not a "group" of friends but a crisscross of relationships, some close, some almost hostile despite a depth of mutual insight. They judge each other not by material attainments but by how closely each has clung...
...does not work, of course. But Calvino's narrative of this doomed quest succeeds admirably, in part because he, like Samuel Beckett, recognizes the comic possibilities inherent in the tailspin of logic toward the absurd. Mr. Palomar's relentless speculations render him buffoonish. Passing a woman sunbathing topless on a beach, he averts his eyes lest she cover herself and embarrass them both. On reflection, though, he decides that his behavior was incorrect, since it reinforced outmoded taboos against nudity. So he walks by again, this time taking in the bare breasts as an incidental feature in the general landscape...
...Truck is Kennedy's first novel. Dial brought it out in 1969, a time when even the most unbuttoned fiction could not compete against reality. There was more than enough anarchy on the front pages, and few critics took notice of a book about a journalist's buffoonish terror tactics during a newspaper strike. Read then, The Ink Truck might easily have been mistaken for a political statement about the freedom-loving workers' battle against the oppressive Establishment. Now, by the limelight of the Kennedy phenomenon, the book can be seen freshly for what...
...Kaplan seems to be aiming for minimalism, a severe understatement that admirably suits the grim plot. The characters wear black and wander around their comfortable living room (Quincy's unadorned common room) with the same aimless ferocity that characterizes their power games. Hedda (Julie Cohen), newly married to the buffoonish George Tesman (Curt Raffi), is bitter and trapped, seeking to find artistic fulfillment by manipulating the men around her. In the few days that follow her return with Tesman from their honeymoon, Hedda gradually becomes twisted in her own plots, trapped by the circumstances that once made her powerful...