Word: cleverer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...white magic still works, but it no longer holds any surprises. Eliot's lesser poetic cousins-Auden, Spender, Stevens-sip the highballs that somehow fail to intoxicate, that are diluted by too much intellectual ice. There are such grand old but long-familiar individualists as Martini-clever e. e. cummings (with lemon peel) and hard-cider-happy Robert Frost. The younger men frantically mix their drinks, from opaque Bloody Marys to phony-bucolic applejack. Mostly they are reduced to talking to each other...
...exquisite modern adaptation of Cinderella. This version is modern, to say the least, with such lines as, "Hit the road, toad," and "Wise-guy, eh?" It seems to do Cinderella no harm, however, for children in the audience aren't bothered by the dialogue, which is a clever compound of parental cliches...
...reasonably macabre farce, which can't help bringing Arsenic and Old Lace to mind, The Honeys has its fine wacky moments and amusing passages-whether bright remarks, clever pantomime, comic props, a funny murder scene, skillful acting or Ben Edwards' sets. If, for all that, there are a good many lulls, it is perhaps because the play is happier in its details than in its fundamental design. The Honeys is fairly safe playing murder for laughs because its victims are so loathsome. But Arsenic and Old Lace could play safer-and be much funnier-because its murderers were...
Possibly the only quarrel I have with the structure of the Gondoliers is the absence of a prominent and clever patter song. The defect is, however, somewhat covered by numerous biting lines that can add considerable sharpness to the action between songs, and the cast is quick to find the comedy in many of them. Yet others are lost because, as in the first act, the dialogue has been paced too rapidly and the punch line is buried under the heavy dirgue of the following speech. If Director Richard Smithies had applied his talent in developing the humor with...
Unfortunately, Fry was of very little help to his actors. The people he created are, if anything, too articulate, and their lines are often so clever that they ring faintly of dishonesty. Poetry, especially as it is applied to the stage, can dig down into the depths of a human soul and reveal the raw emotions which lie hidden there. Fry's poetry seldom does this-it seems to float on the surface, a frosting on the dramatic cake. But if the poet cannot be profound, he at least knows how to be amusing. When the epigrams, many of which...