Word: sitcomming
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...Harvard professor stars in a verbal free-for-all in Boston "Drink up!" WCVB-TV Producer Claude Pelanne told the studio audience as it waited for the taping to begin. The wine glasses were quickly drained. Pelanne was not preparing the 40-odd guests for some mindless sitcom: he was readying them for Miller's Court, a Boston television show in which the audience matches wits on controversial issues of the law with Arthur Miller, a professor from the Harvard Law School. The result: an uninhibited, often dramatic and sometimes humorous encounter that now is viewed...
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...
Every year at about this time, the Actors Theater of Louisville, in Kentucky, puts on a dramathon. Nine new American plays are presented in three days. The guiding themes this year might be labeled God, country and family, the last just barely above the TV sitcom level. Thanks to Jon Jory, Louisville's producing director, every play, whatever its aesthetic caliber, comes off with skill, finesse and devotion. Herewith, three of the rewarding best...
Coming just after M*A*S*H, which was No. 2 in the ratings last week, Flo has everything going for it but a knock down script. The best line is a leftover from Alice, "Kiss mah grits!" The writ ing is not bad, by sitcom standards, but it is not nearly as good as Polly Holliday deserves. She is one of TV's truly funny women, and she needs a script as frothy as the stuff coming out of the cooler at the Yellow Rose...
...benevolent father of the Miller family, Ted Wiprud sets the tone for all the other actors. Wiprud could easily have lapsed into a fifties sitcom portrayal of a consistently sympathetic and understanding father. More convincing than that, his performance shows real anger and also real forgiveness. Amusing when harassed by his exasperating offspring and touching when anxious for them, Wiprud stays in the background throughout the play. A quiet, unspectacular role, mouthing soothing commonplaces to his children about the necessity of growing up, Wiprud nevertheless makes this father the sort everyone would like to have. As his wife, Shelley Evans...