THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Tuesday, February 4, 1969
Tuesdov February 4 1 9f9 -, ~ -, --
festival
set-down, simply-good
By STUART GANNES
The puns get hissed, some-
times the jokes flop and at
other times the audience misses
a line, but the performance of
the Second City comedy team
is original enough to win en-
thusiastic applause, and crea-
tive enough to prove that cut-
and-dried night club stand-up
monologues and Bob Hope
studio skits are not inevitable
mediums of American comedy.
In fact, the Second City's act,
in Trueblood Aud. last night
successfully included a wider
variety of entertainment forms
than any live comic perform-
ance I have ever seen.
While the backbone of the
Second City's repertoire re-
mains the same ironic political
quips and stale references to
sexual voyeurism which Amer-
ican comedy seems irrevocably
chained to, individual skits bas-
ed on sharp, psychological in-
sight are truly worthy of being
considered classics.
One in particular, a mono-
logue by Carol Robinson about a
person's changing attitudes to-
ward society and religion,
achieved in five blunt minutes
as much as some three credit
sociology courses at the Uni-
versity do in five weeks.
The sketch begins with M i s s
Robinson speaking in the dia-
lect and the context of a ten
year old girl explaining why her
grandmother wanted her to go
to religious services and confes-
sion every week. Then she be-
ja
comes in quick success
gum-chewing teenager,
gum-c h e w i n g teenag
pseudo-intellectual coe
pregnant girl, a young
ban housewife, a sociall,
scious woman, a church
arch and finally a cri
grandmother warning
grandchildren about the
sity of going to Churc
saying confession.
The Second City 1
don't rely solely on di
though. Many of the sk
built around creativel
mime, an art which see
be disappearing as TV ar
absorb the last few live m
shows and mime troup:
forming in America.
Pantomime comes acr
live performances where
on television. On a live
a pantomime artist can
enormous tension in th
ience simply 'through
contact, physical presen
good piano accompanime
TV, even great pantomir
tists like Marcel Marcel
to come across. In a theat
audience's eyes are glued
actor, on television, the
er's first reaction is that
time is wrong with the
tube on his Magnavox.
At one point last ni
member of the cast ap
alone on the stage and
to arrange the chairs (th
props) in a straight ro
that point, he took out a
'humor'
sion a the audience to laugh, but as he
a - walked off, two other actors ap-
:er, a peared on the stage and began
d, a a skit which used the chairs as
subur- a couch. Even the stage-hand
y con- manipulation of props ' was
matri- turned into a joke.
rochety Another technique employed
her by the actors at the beginning
ne d of both portions of their show
;h adnd was a singing, dancing, yelling
charade of one line. "stop-'em"
players caricatures on American- .cul-
alogue, ture, all performed in front of
its are a strobe light. The effect of the
panto- yelling, dancing and especially
ems to the strobe was to accentuate the
nd film 'grotesqueness of the lines and
instrel make the message of the chorus
s per- -you'll never get out of this
alive-plain eerie.
'oss in Of course, the skits derive
it fails their momentum from quick
stage, one-line jokes which on the
Sbuild whole were quite funny.
e aud- a
visual For instance, a speech by an
ce and IBM executive: "Glib-dib-
nt. On bleep-beep-bop." a drunken
me ar- white says to a black soldier "I
mu fail want you to know how we're all
ter, the behind you." To which the
to the soldier replies: "yeah, I noticed
view- that."
some-
sound
ght, a
peared
started
e only I1/T1 IT AC
W. C. FIELDS
HELD OVER BY POPULAR DEMAND
Everybody's favorite dirty old man is back in town. Putting it
down once more for a whole new generation of potential
Fields' cultists. And a whole generation of devoted Fields'
addicts. Whatever the subject, whatever the treatment, W. C.
Fields' humor is more up-to-date than the hippest of contem-
porary flicks.
Catch "My Little Chickadee" with the incomparable Mae
West. Then see "You Can't Cheat An Honest Man." That's all
it should take to make W. C. your favorite dirty old man, too.'.
"YOU CAN'T CHEAT AN
HONEST MAN"
MON. thru FRI.--7:00, 9:30
"MY LITTLE CH ICKADE E"
with MAE WEST-7:30
MON. thru FRI .-8:10
RG PnwIP
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40
w. At
wand
and told the audience he had
changed the chairs into a couch.
His self-confidence inspired
IN I\III
-Daily-Larry Robbins
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-music
Marlboro of a different color
HURRY!
ENDS
TUESDAY
NATIONAL !GENERAL COftPOfATI0W,
FOX EASTERN TEATRESo
FOX VILLarGE)
375 No. MAPLE RD.-"769-1300
MON. -TU ES.
7:00-9:00
SUNDAY
1:45-4:15-
6 :40-9 :10
SYMPOSIUM
By R. A. PERRY'
The Marlboro Festival in Ver-
mont has served as a summer
chamber - music workshop for
professional musicians s i n c e
1950. Occasionally recordings
have been released by ensem-
bles formed at Marlboro and re-
cently Marlboro personnel have
offered traveling concert4 series.
Normally, one associates Casals,
Serkin, Bloom, Laredo, Schneid-
er, Parnas, Levine and Barrows
with this festival but Saturday
night in a Rakham Aud. re-
cital lesser- known musicians
performed under the aegis of
the Marlboro, trademark. The'
concert was one of the least
memorable in this year's out-
standing University Musical So-
ciety series.
What pleasures the program
provided were offered almost
exclusively by the young singer,.
Thomas Paul. Mr. Paul's bass
voice cannot extend too greatly
in either direction (into either
the cantante or profondo range)
and though his reserve power is
limited, he uses his rich, pleas-
ing voice with artistic subtlety.
Excellent in diction, he pays
attention to the dramatic exig-
encies of the text.
Mr. Paul, first sang five songs
of Schubert. While' the quality
of vocalism was high-rhyth-
ically interesting, dramatically
sensitive, and tonally ingratiat-
ing-I do not feel that the es-
spntially rich quality of Schu-
bert can be expressed in a heavy
bass voice. In "Dithyrambe," for
example, the thickness of Paul's
voice naturally obviated the
easy lilt of the song.
In Moussorgsky's "Songs and
Dances of Death," however, Paul
was in his element. Moussorgsky
once wrote that "my stage peo-
ple should speak like living
people - my music must be an
artistic reproduction of human
speech in all of its finest
shades . . . that is the ideal
toward which I strive." In his
"Songs and Dances of Death"
the composer indeed achieved
dark drama dependent not on
Romantic lyricism, but upon the
artistically molded natural in-
flections of the bass voice. Mr.
Paul managed fine, careful
readings, which, if they did not
stir the listener a l London or
Christof, at least evoked the
somber colors and' passions of
Moussorgsky's landscape.{
Accompanying Thomas Paul
at the piano was Richard Goode,
his name being not very indi-
cative of his pianism. Goode is
one of those pianists whom one
finds more interesting to watch
than hear. Certainly it is unfair
to resent the leaps and swoons
performed at the bench, but
such actions almost always de-
tract from the artist's own con-
trol of the score. Goode's play-
ing was heavy and limited to
either loud or soft, with very
little dynamic modulation.
Goode was Joined by violin-
ist Pina Carmirelli for the-'Bar-
tok Sonata No. 2, which opened
the concert. Miss Carmirelli com-
mands a respectable technique,
if a rather musky tone, and she
got through the technical hur-
dIes-about as many as Bartok
could invent!-but added little
in the way of interpretation.
Goode pounded and bounced
away behind her, and there was
little communication between
the two. Their performance was
one thing Bartok should never
be: boring.
Join The Daily
Sports Staff
M (M presents
the John Frankenheimer-
' .vEdward Lewis Production of
the fixer
STARTS WEDNESDAY
NOTICE!! Continuous Showings
Daily-Off Office Opens 1:15 P.M.
'69
*
V
0
S
V
4'
FEB. 13
Union Ballroom
10 p.m.-Dawn
Admission free
LOVE; SEX and RELATIONSHIPS
A teach-in conducted by
Robert Rummer, author of
"The Harrad Experiment"
PARAMOUNT PICrTUES prn.e.
A IE nu
FRANco ZEFF1RELIU
ROMEO
A'ULIET
SHOWINGS
DAILY
4:00
'6:40
9J10-
Feb. 16 WAYNE MORSE
Union Ballroom
2 P.M $1.00
Feb. 19 & 20 GENESIS I :
League Ballroom An underground fim festiva
7 P.M. and 9:30 P.M.
$1.50
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r 'nratsxwaoir/f ~~~/Ia11'W~/ MlW1 I'Slfl a/MQ f YO( /J. 1 GCfEIVE
It~ts~apa / -- P EAIN/ I D lIIQIo....
MTiMJl/N!iIcnaaPMYR8l11fln~, nU. W c". N 0M
Nd~ffirIaVR-AN Na~aMN AEU/WfIMO N/14J fIIJJUw MaMAWt
FEB. 22
Rackham Aud.
Admission FREE
ARTS FESTIVAL
TODAY
John Perrault
Audio-Visual Poetry, Aud. A, 8 pm.
U-M Gamelon Society Concert
Ancient Javanese music and theatre
Hill Aud., 8 p.m.
TOMORROW'
Stanley Kauffmann
New Republic's Film Critic, speaking on
Richard Lester's "How I Won the War,"
immediately after its screening,
Architecture Aud., 8 p.m.
DR. ROLLO MAY, PhD.
Existential Psychology
04
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(Very Insidious Plan
to Pusb Pizza)
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presents
THE ALVIN AlLEY
AMERICAN DANCE THEATRE
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'Til 1 :30 Fri. & Sat. Nights
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 8:30
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IN COOPERATION WITH-I T HE CREATIVE ARTS FESTIVAL
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