Word: merriment
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...directed by Timothy Mayer, is if anything too faithful and tame. Shakespeare's play depicts a civil war brought about by a usurper King and the self-serving pretenders to his throne. Some productions emphasize the martial valor of the King's ablest rival, Hotspur; others exult in the merriment and dissipation of the Prince of Wales' favorite companion, Falstaff. The closest that Mayer comes to taking a point of view is to underline the play's presumption that history is made by men, not social forces: he ends many scenes with one or two figures frozen in silhouette...
...outline, this sounds like a ghetto translation of sex-reversal farce: Tevye meets Tootsie. Yentl mines much judicious merriment from the plight of a girl who wants to prove herself a man but is in love with a man who's in love with the girl she has married. But there are sweet and subtle tones to the comedy. In three versions of the song No Wonder, Yentl muses in derision, then in awe, then in sympathy, on Hadass's domestic graces. Composer Michel Legrand and Lyricists Marilyn and Alan Bergman have constructed the score as Yentl...
...ancient lines: "He looks as if he'd been poured into his suit and forgotten to say when." "From the collar upward he stands alone." The japes about class and custom once seemed spun of gossamer; now they appear to be composed of cobwebs. As for the champagne merriment, it seems to have been uncorked since...
...this time, things have gotten pretty much out of control in the audience, anyway. Numerous bottles of bubbly have been carried into the house after the intermission, and there is much merriment Behind me, a sloshed woman loudly asks her escort to explain a pun "What's that mean--penis?" At one poirt, cries of "Freshman Mixer" and "Buzz Aldren!" go up. In the center section, guest-of-honor Steven Spielberg, the Pudding's newly crowned Man of year, looks mildly bewildered. E.T., after all never had too deal with alumni...
Safire, however, is convinced that "the breaking of the President is merrily under way." So often critical of Reagan, he should know better: there really seems little merriment or triumph in the press criticism...