Word: slapstick
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...first three acts are a sad tale, "best for winter." In the fourth act, the play metamorphoses into a springtime world of romance and comedy: Redford's interpretation of this act is fit only for the Ziegfeld follies. He has included kick lines, scat numbers and Three Stooges slapstick falls. These numbers are endless and the act almost succeeds in ruining an otherwise brilliant production...
Levi is not alone. Ed Redlich wears a white Santa Claus beard for his disguise. Dan Breslin's Autolycus is complete with a black construction-paper moustache. Breslin's performance is all jerking eyebrows, scat songs and slapstick falls...
Seton combines naive hesitancy with repressed desire in her characterization of Reg's sister Annie. Although her mugging and hand-wringing border on slapstick in a garden discussion about the illicit weekend together, Seton's performance overall is humorous and believable...
...Wagner's demand that his works be called "music-dramas." But most scoff at that today, and take the music much more seriously than the drama. Sellars does the opposite, and compensates for the loss in musical clarity with wonderfully adroit stagecraft. Sometimes it descends to the level of slapstick pot-shots at Wagner's Nibelungs, Gibichungs, forest-birds and bears, but at least as often it sensibly comments on the eternal production problems of the Ring...
...Show. In the new show, these writers have again loaded a simple sitcom premise with a wide variety of well-drawn (and exceptionally well cast) characters, sophisticated jokes and astute social observations. The first episode, which may be a classic of its kind, also manages to work in unforced slapstick gags, a touch of pathos and a double-whammy final punch line...