Or “I wouldn’t respect you and I wouldn’t respect myself,” or “Darling, I’m so ashamed.” Not only is the acting of Nichols and May so substantial that they can construct believable characters out of literary rubble like that, but their literary discipline is substantial enough for them to know when a character is so solidly built that he can deliver a punch line. “I can’t stand to see you this way,” one of them, horrified by the agonies the other one is going through in an effort to give up smoking, will say, to the accompaniment of those circumstantial spasms of the larynx, the nostrils, and the jawline that are characteristic equally of a congenital clown and of a Method actor. How would either of them ever find anyone else he’d distrust so much?” One thing most Nichols and May characters are addicted to is clichés, spoken in tones of embarrassed and embarrassing sincerity. A comment that both of them feel is a just description of what they do and how they do it was recently made by the critic Walter Kerr, who wrote, “It’s a good thing Mike Nichols and Elaine May are partners. Their attitude toward the people they have invented is rigorously unsentimental but by no means unemotional as well they might, they often seem to be enraged by the way their characters are behaving. As depicted by Nichols and May, mothers tend to whine, grown-up sons to snivel, adolescents to pant or prattle, unfaithful wives to simper, little boys to bluster, and husbands to drone. The result is a wholly original technique that allows them, at one and the same time, to make funny faces and wear funny hats and to deal accurately and candidly with what one man who has worked with them calls “the secrets of the family”-the appalling (to them, at least) relationships that habitually exist between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, or, in short, males and females.
Nichols and May use the Stanislavski method of acting to perform comedy sketches in classic blackout form. Of the members of the group of suffering entertainers-though it may be disrespectful to use the word “group” to describe people who spend much of their time being disrespectful to groups-the two who have devised the most striking way of making their pain laughable are the team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Gone is the time when being jocose about Bing Crosby’s toupee, Jayne Mansfield’s structure, or the outcome of the daily double at Hialeah was fashionable the new comedy covers a bleak political psychological-sociological-cultural range that reaches from the way public affairs are conducted in Washington to the way private ones are conducted in Westchester.
We track a lot of different crossword puzzle providers to see where clues like " Ready and witty retort" have been used in the past.One surprising development in the entertainment business during the last half-dozen years has been the ascent of a generation of young comedians whose public attitude is indignation and whose subject matter is man’s inhumanity to man-of which, if their work is a reflection of their state of mind, they consider themselves to be outstanding victims. Recent Usage of Ready and witty retort in Crossword Puzzles Possibly related crossword clues for " Ready and witty retort"īased on the answers listed above, we also found some clues that are possibly similar or related to Ready and witty retort: Matching Crossword Puzzle Answers for "Ready and witty retort"īelow is the complete list of answers we found in our database for Ready and witty retort:
If you are stuck trying to answer the crossword clue " Ready and witty retort", and really can't figure it out, then take a look at the answers below to see if they fit the puzzle you're working on. We found 1 answers for this crossword clue. If you're looking for all of the crossword answers for the clue " Ready and witty retort" then you're in the right place.