Word: comically
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Executive producer Dick Wolf (Law & Order) at least doesn't trivialize the well-worn subject. He avoids Bochco-like comic subplots and focuses on weighty medical-ethical issues rather than on hospital soap opera. Early stories range from a boxer showing symptoms of Parkinson's disease to a couple who refuse surgery for their young son because of religious convictions. And John Mahoney, as a doctor who teaches a course in humanistic medicine, is the best gruff-but-kindly TV physician since Dr. Gillespie hung up his stethoscope...
...recalls. "We" were his partners, Jim Smith and Bob Camp, and his girlfriend Lynne Naylor. All were in their early 30s and had served time on Saturday- morning cartoon shows. What the world needed now, reasoned Kricfalusi & Co., was the anarchic vulgarity of the Three Stooges and the comic timing of old Warner Bros. cartoons, plus a dash of Monty Python lavatory humor. In 1989 they formed a shoestring company called Spumco...
Tito is Mozart's second and last opera seria, and shows a master grappling with a heavily codified form and using it to his compositional advantage. Although the form had traditionally excluded ensemble singing, Mozart's greatest successes had been with the extensive ensembles in his great comic operas. Accordingly, he came up with a compromise that went beyond even his ensemble writing for these operas: the finale to the first act, which combines an on-stage ensemble and an antiphonal chorus...
Because he is their father's favorite son, ominous circumstances (the attempted fratricide by his brothers) surround Joseph; his brothers, still driven by jealousy, end up selling him as a slave to a rich Egyptian. A further mixture of tragi-comic events culminate in Joseph's condemnation to a jail cell. From there, the story spirals into an exciting spin and eventually Joseph finds himself in the Pharaoh's service...
...most impressive aspect of this play, however, is not the music, but the production. Executive producer Lori N. Durr and director Scott Arsenault provide the play with the dramatic energy and fervor that complement it musical prowess. Little things like giving the play a contemporary feel to enhance its comic impact by using devices like a Where's Joseph instead of Where's Waldo book. The dramatic impact of the final scene relies on its seemingly effortless creation of a golden chariot. It substitutes people for the animals and parts of the chariot, glitter paper for the reins...