Word: subplot
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Unseen but much discussed is the suburban couple's daughter, a college freshman who has stopped attending class to provide round-the-clock sexual service to two men. The girl's relatives fatuously assure one another that her self-abasing behavior is a phase she will outgrow. In another subplot, the girl's parents consider divorce, but the audience cannot see the agony they profess to feel. The entire proceedings, staged by Mike Nichols, are life as viewed through Saran Wrap. Although Broadway Veteran Nichols has mislaid his gift for telling detail, he has evoked maximum slickness and verve...
...insertion of a subplot focusing on a Jewish couple who had been held in a Nazi concentration camp during the second world war was just too much to take. The airline stewardess, Ingrid (Hanna Schygulla), is asked by the hijackers to select Jewish-sounding names from the collection of passenger's passports. She refuses, saying, "Don't you know I'm German...I won't do it again!" The director goes on to demonstrate that he is aiming at the lowest common denominator of human intelligence when he shows us a close-up of a Jewish passenger's tatooed forearm...
Even the text itself has undergone significant alteration at Brustein's hands. To highlight Middleton's thoroughly contemporary theme of oppressed womanhood, one third of the original text has been excised--including the entire subplot written by Middleton's collaborator William Rowley, dealing with feigned madness and giving the play its title character...
This mission is the subplot of the whole movie. But with all the killing going on, and all the tangled webs weaved by the gun-toting characters, it seems to get lost. In fact, you don't realize what MacRose is doing until about 20 minutes after you leave the theater...
...reprobate. "Devil Without a Cause" Like the next song. "Ding Dong," which features Mandy Torpedoes and the Pips, the strength of "Devil" lies more in the excellent music and choreography than in any single performance. By the fourth scene, though, the audience is clearly itching to get back to subplot A--Harvard undergrads and alumni of what may be the most anachronistic club on campus dress up, drink up, and go wild. The mini-kickline near the close of the act brings rabid cheers from a crowd that smells serious socializing just down the aisle...