Word: script
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Ritchell's direction sags a little until the convicts' play--George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer--finally gets under way. In any case, Ritchell has not tried any radical approach to the play, opting instead for an almost literal adherence to the stage directions in Wertenbaker's script, and the result is a striking if somewhat conventional, interpretation...
Zucker: Very little. Maybe 5 percent or something like that. We really spend a lot of time working on the script...
...still funny; it's still funny!" Something you just come up with one day on the set--you might decide the next take that it's not so great. Obviously, things do come up, and we do add things, but really we pretty much stick to the script...
...play was not really redeemed by the acting, for the simple reason that there was none. The cast seemed to spend less time acting than contorting. To be fair, they did not have much of a script to work with. It sprouted such inspiring lines as "I love you and everything is beautiful"--enunciated in various shades of monotone by a variety of people--and "I have lost her. Give her back to me." By trying to use such cliches for ironic ends, Artaud was created the worst kind of cliche--in effect, a self-parody...
Even when Durang does come through with a witty line, he buries it in script which takes the joke too far and detracts from its effectiveness. "Sorry, I don't mean to act like I have an opinion," says a momentarily sincere Felicia Falana to her TV audience. Funny, really funny. But when she goes on and on, asserting, among other things that she "agrees with everyone," the line just loses it humor. By stating the obvious in what seems like a deliberate over-kill of the lines, Durang weakens some of his best satire...