Word: comically
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...Shakespeare's original is better seen than read, in music, it's all supremely entertaining. The Boys From Syracuse abounds with laughs (the weakest song, "You Have Cast Your Shadow on the Sea," is the lease witty,) but the comedy never becomes relentless. The characters while obviously comic types, never degenerate into mere cardboard cutouts to be manipulated according to the exigencies of plot, they don't have three dimensional life, but thanks to the music they at least gain two dimensional animation...
...comic routines have something of the same boisterously inventive spirit as last year's ART Sganarelle, though not quite as wonderfully anarchic. The only real disappointment comes from the massive chase-cum-ballet near the end of the musical; the frenetic back and forth motions of the whole cast never quite resolve into anything coherent, and the result is more confusing than funny...
Instead of working up to the stupendous climax which the hectic comic pace demands, Lovesick merely runs out of things to show, and--after only 90 minutes--concludes on a typically sappy boy-gets--girl note. Successful contemporary comedy demands a more innovative approach; captivated too many times already by a vast assortment of comedic episodes, audiences rightly expect a four-dollar ticket price to buy them cleverness, not redundancy...
...Fanny, she seems initially Like a snobbish and slightly silly guardian of the Brahmins' unalterable law of proprieties. But as the play progresses, she begins to reveal a zany comic sense and something more: the courage to carry out the marriage vows in adversity. Frances Conroy's Mags is quite touching as she seeks a parental benison on her vocation. None of the performances could be bettered. Seldes and Moffat may never have given more emotionally charged and exquisitely crafted performances in their long-spanned careers...
Displacement of conventional expectations is, of course, Forsyth's specialty. If one sometimes wishes Forsyth could more often keep his eye on the comic point, it is also true that he finds his best material out there on the periphery, at the edge of the frame. What is a punk rocker doing in the rural highlands? Why does that motorbiker keep burp-burping through the action without explaining himself? Forsyth isn't telling. He's just laughing to himself, a shy, shrewd film maker worth bending near so you can hear what he has to say amidst...