Word: comically
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...doing stuff you weren't supposed to be doing." At Boston's Emerson College, he majored in English and helped found the Emerson Comedy Workshop. After graduating in 1979, he played local clubs while teaching classes at Emerson in comedy and acting. "Leary really inspired me," says actor and comic Anthony Clark, Emerson '86. "You'd see comics doing all the safe stuff -- stewardesses, Gilligan's Island, socks in the drawer -- that's all garbage! Leary was always up front, on the edge, even when the club managers wanted to limit his time 'cause...
...Leary lacks the oratorical grace of Gray (Swimming to Cambodia) or the comic wisdom of monologist Eric Bogosian (Talk Radio), but he's learning. "When Leary first started doing stand-up, like all of us -- he sucked," says comic Eddie Brill, Emerson '80, a friend. That began to change after Leary's father died of a heart attack in 1985. In response to such an event, says Brill, "you can either go into a fetal position or do what Leary did -- just lash out. He became really deep and really funny...
Bookends succeeds only when it maintains its comic focus. As a serious exploration of relationships or paranoia it is on less reliable footing. With judicious cutting to emphasize its strong points, Bookends would be a solid comic work rather than a mismatched amalgam of ruminations and jokes...
...Dorf's comic sense serves him much better than his philosophical nature. From the opening line of the play, "I killed the reference librarian," Dorf displays his absurdist flair. Scott Schwartz's direction aggressively matches that sensibility...
Left to this framework, Bookends would succeed as a darkly comic romp. However, the script's multiple flashbacks aim for a wholly different style of comedy. Rather than the absurdism of the central scenes, the flashbacks try to be witty and biting. They unfortunately fall far short of the rest of the play. More serious than the rest, they interrupt the over-the-top momentum of the hostage scenes...