Word: comically
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...beginning are quite riveting, the result of some fine acting. Nicole Gallant brings a complex pathos to the role of disturbed, pitiful Monique; Elizabeth Marek is refreshingly brassy and carnivorous as the rotund Denise; and Eve Kahn, in hair curlers and a ratty blue bathrobe, makes a comic Aunt Charlotte, mugging as if she were in a French-Canadian farce...
Under Andrew Olson's direction, the production seems less concerned with articulating Heller's statement than in parodying the triteness. References to Harvard and reality (not to imply that the two are mutually exclusive) do provide some comic relief, which after all, may be the only way to effectively stage the play in 1983. But after the first scene we find no follow through; the second scene drags, lacking action and pacing. Even though the second act has its moments, they are buried beneath a little too much shtick and vaudevillian slapstick. For the audience, it seems like the longest...
...Lowell House that they can't afford to break chairs at each performance, but even so the actors handled the mishap with ease. A successful ad lib can lighten a play but a bad one can murder it, and there is already plenty of murder in Ira Levin's comic thriller. So the actors stayed cool, and the tightly constructed, well paced production didn't founder...
Taylor gets help from a cast of unusual depth, in which the military hero (Michael Rapposelli), the middle-aged couple (Bill Tomic and Sue Bear) and the three "proteans" (Henry Biggs, Suzanne Tanner, and Tracey Trench) especially stand out. The latter set of characters show great comic versatility in moving among several jester-type roles: they are, in order, clowns, slaves, travelers, and foot soldiers, playing buffoons with enough restraint to keep from becoming annoying...
FORTUNATELY, THE SHOW never strays too far from its comic trump cards--buffoonery and lewdness. The crowd is treated to a male slave (Bob Brown) being forced by Pseudolus to don women's clothing, only to be pursued by nearly every man in the cast. The young girl Philia plays her airhead-blonde character to the hilt, unwittingly offering herself to the wrong men and ruining the schemes designed to unite her with Hero. And Pseudolus moves rapidly from character to character, passing himself off as head of the house, a soothsayer, a brothel-keeper, and, of course, Cupid...