Word: comically
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...intimacy with women. What at first appears to be an interesting modification of the Oedipal arrangement--where feelings of hatred and jealousy towards the father are subsumed by Wallace's interactions with other women--turns out to be a cliched expression of childhood trauma. Granted, the play is a comic treatment of serious themes, but the fact that all of Wallace's relationships and potential flings are somehow tainted with his mother's blood is too convenient and unconvincing...
...formidable obstacle posed by the script did not completely hinder director Bridger McGaw '97 respectable show. Well-cast as Wallace, Jed Silverstein gave a seasoned and (at rare moments) touching perfromance. With a mix of stand-up comic swagger and adolescent noxiousness, Silverstein breathed life into Wallace's character and kept him marvelously alive throughout. Becca Lowenhaupt is memorable as the wise, heavily-accented Jewish grandmother, a stereotype people never seem to grow tired...
Shirley Jones has left her husband of 17 years, comic Marty Ingels, and he seems to be using it as a source for material: "Whenever we go out, she says, 'Think David Niven.' I say, 'O.K.' She says, 'So why's it coming out Pee-wee Herman?'" The problem of disparate comic tastes was apparently exacerbated by Jones' children Shaun, Ryan and Patrick Cassidy and stepson David Cassidy, who were unable to get happy with Ingels. The couple still plan to work together...
Lucky Jim confirmed Amis' ability to evoke such reactions in print. It also established the author's basic comic strategy: a beleaguered hero tries to behave inoffensively among people whose self-centered behavior drives him privately mad. This formula still sparkled in The Russian Girl (1994), in which a husband meditates on his wife's odd and affected accent: "After a time he had stopped noticing it at all more than a couple of times a day, and for years had given up speculating what speech-sounds she might make if, for example, he were to creep up behind...
...incarnates with a weenie voice and a brassy poignancy. The distracting visual trope of Allen's last few movies--that virtually every scene, no matter how long, must be filmed in one shot with a very fidgety camera--pays off in the first meeting of Lenny and Linda; the comic tension is deliciously built and sustained. And when the chorus breaks into some dreamy Cole Porter harmonies as background to an unlikely amour, the goofiness is almost magical...