Word: stand-up
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Tommy Kramer, the playwright, has a good grasp of some of the weaknesses in the show. "It's a difficult play that's almost a non-play--episodes, a series of skits," Kramer says. Kramer is disappointed with the opening scene and rightly criticizes it: "It's eight stand-up comics at the beginning, and the dialogue could have been a lot snappier." In the opening scene, the jokes die; the players appear lifeless, like actors reading cue cards. But the dialogue quickly snaps up, the performers relax with their roles, and work with each other until the humor comes...
...difficult to find any comedian to compare. First of all, Bruce was a nightclub performer, and no other stand-up comedian has received so much attention without making a mark through television, movies or records. Bruce made a name for himself during his court cases; the brouhaha that surrounded his death immortalized him. Most of what the modern public knows about Bruce comes from secondary acounts. The only first-hand records of Bruce's work are his autobiography, a posthumous collection of his material entitled "The Essential Lenny Bruce," and "The Lenny Bruce Performance Film." Although many of his engagements...
...Fiddler on the Roof; of a heart attack; in Philadelphia, where he was about to open in a new play. The son of a rabbi, Samuel Joel Mostel decided to be a painter, but supported himself with a number of odd jobs, including working as a $5-a-night stand-up comic at neighborhood parties. When he was 27, he made his professional acting debut with a series of impressions at a café and within the year was in Hollywood. Like the character he portrayed in Woody Allen's film The Front, Mostel was blacklisted during the McCarthy...
...This year Sister Osmond will forsake her clean-teen look for boots, bobbed hair and slinky high fashion. Joining the song-and-skit brigade this season: Richard Pryor, who will bring his jive, streetwise humor to a new NBC variety series, and Redd Foxx, who will sanitize his stand-up act for his own weekly show...
Playing Mudbone, the levee-tender, or Oilwell, the "dangerous nigger" who fights the cops, he lets the humor build up gradually as the audience understands the character he is impersonating-or is possessed by. "What Lily and I do transcends stand-up comedy crap," he boasts. "We make it theater. We involve the audience in truth because everything we do is real. Both of us are possessed when we are onstage. Yes, man, I'm talking literally. Possession...