Word: comically
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More than a play about marriage, however, The Marriage of Bette and Boo is a play about parents and, more specifically, about in-laws. The differences between Bette and Boo's parents and their very different senses of familial responsibility provide Durang with endless amounts of comic fuel. Karen MacDonald (playing Margaret Brennan, Bette's mother) stomps across the stage as a wildly exaggerated version of an over-domineering mother in complete denial that anything is wrong with her family; Thomas Derrah mumbles his way convincingly through Margaret's stroke-victim husband Paul's virtually incomprehensible speeches. In contrast...
...children provide the comic relief that was a trademark of the previous Menu...
...situation in Israel were not so tragic it would be comic, to the extent that the same characters constantly prove themselves incapable of making any progress. Hopefully, as talks conclude this week, tragedy will no longer be the order...
...real star is Jeff Goldblum as the network's frazzled manager. With his lupine smile and fake-intimate voice, he pushes a line of patter that is just a bit too slick to pass for charm. And when his life starts crumbling, you can almost smell his comic flop sweat through the screen. Tom Schulman's script is smart about the media's ability to create celebrities--and the viewer's need to embrace them--until it goes soft-hearted and -headed by denouncing the very salesmanship that Hollywood and TV are built on. For an hour or so, though...
...plots are too similar to justify separate novels probably has not been paying attention to Roth's career. He has spun whole cycles of fiction around the same, or very similar, characters trying to cope with the unvarying problems of their lives. Repetitive stress is Roth's grand comic theme; his genius shows up in the variations...