Word: sitcom
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...When J.R., after 17 episodes of malign neglect, finally embraced his infant son, viewers responded with nearly 10,000 letters-half saying "Thank God!," the other half saying "Don't ruin it by reforming him.") Hagman developed a touch for light comedy on TV in the '60s sitcom / Dream ofJeannie. He plays the villainy sotto voce and the humor-the infectious delight J.R. brings to the business of malevolent one-upmanship-fortissimo. He struts, whinnies, talks out loud to himself; he has a grand time being bad. His soft, smooth, surprisingly characterless face expresses J.R.'s childishness...
Ouch! As with a lot of other things in this curious little movie, which has the bland air of a sitcom but is blacker in spirit than it pretends to be, there is bitter, discomfiting truth in that moment. Writer Kaufman's guiding spirit is not misogynistic; he lays about him with a fine, impartial hand. For example, Jane Curtin, who could turn out to be Saturday Night Live's most valuable contribution to the movies, plays a woman reduced to instant penury when her husband abandons her and raids all their bank accounts before informing...
...might guess, is a romance between the Air Force pilot turned taxi driver, played by the ingenuous Robert Hays, and the stewardess who takes over the co-pilot's chair from Kareem Abdul-Jabar. Julie Hagarty plays the sallow, teary type--she's sure to snag a nighttime sitcom role from this appearance...
HAPPY END is schizophrenic--an anomalous lark. The biting, sardonic music of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht don't fit the sitcom plot. The play's as far from Brecht & Weill's Three penny Opera as a Keystone Kops film is from Little Caesar. Both plays recount the daring misdeeds and romantic entanglements of a gangster, but Threepenny Opera's sordid outlaws become Happy End's petty, bumbling bullies. Despite a denunciation of capitalism tacked on at the end, Happy End is insubstantial fluff, a romantic comedy expertly staged and acted by the American Repertory Theatre Company...
Nonetheless, the two are drawn to each other in large and little tendernesses and spats. This is where the play drifts into emotions of sitcom dimensions. Herb falls in love with Libby, not incestuously, but romantically and possessively. Libby's mocking jests cannot hide the scars of the unrestorable years. At one point, she pins Herb down, demanding to know why he divorced her mother. Herb rather lamely answers that the lady totally lacked a sense of humor. Logically, this is the weak point of the play. A man as perceptive as Herb would have spotted a congenital...