Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Maria Aitken, a leading British stage and film actress, has starred in numerous West End stage productions of Noel Coward, Alan Ayckbourn, Stephen Sondheim and many others. She enjoys a long association with the Juilliard School and the Yale School of Drama as a visiting professor when her acting schedule permits.
Synopsis
This book isn't a critical examination of high comedy. Rather it's a collection of suggestions for the middlemen: the actors who have to catch the comic spark from the playwright and pass it on to the audience. The effort involved must be imperceptible: one has to acquire the cleverness the articulacy the febrility of the characters and then make the whole laborious exercise seem like swimming through silk...The characters in high comedies don't find verbal sophistication difficult or unfamiliar; they enjoy it as you might enjoy slang.