Q & A
OCTOBER 22
"A fly in the ointment"
Your faithful dramaturg spent quite a lot of time with Gen Z dictionaries and translators looking for something that "the yoots" would recognize, but alas there does not appear to be an equivalent. I did find something from the late 2000s when Hawaiian pizza made a new surge--and found many detractors. "Well that's a pineapple on my pizza" had a short life as an equivalent phrase.
The phrase itself is very old--actually from the Bible- and means something not fully tragic but moderately annoying nonetheless, that required action to be fixed.
Frasier Parties
The sitcom Frasier staring Kelsey Grammar ran from 1993 to 2004. It is a spinoff of the series Cheers, and was premised on bar regular Doctor Frasier Crane returning home to Seattle. The show also had a brief reboot on Paramount from 2023-2024. Below are a few clips of parties at the Crane home. 2 are from the early years and 1 is from the remount.
OCTOBER 21: Dudley Do-Right
During table work, Greg and Laurie mentioned Dudley Do-Right as an example of stereotypical, simplistic farce.
Dudley was a well-meaning Canadian Mountie who first appeared in segments aired during The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. He would go on to have his own animated series, and eventually a feature film. Dudley often faced off with a mustache-twirling villain named Snidley Whiplash.
OCTOBER 21: Laurie's presentation in rehearsal
OCTOBER 20: Who the heck is Tom Stoppard?
Sir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born playwright. He began his career in England in 1954 as a journalist, soon moving to London in 1960 to start his work as a playwright. His first play A Walk on the Water (1960), which was televised in 1963, soon reached London with a stage version titled Enter a Free Man (1968). His next work, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1965), showed at the 1966 Edinburgh Festival to rave reviews. It became internationally known in 1967 after it was entered into Britain's National Theatre. Additional work includes stage plays Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Rock n' Roll (2006), The Coast of Utopia trilogy (2002), and Leopoldstadt (2020) Over the course of his career he has written for radio, television, film and stage. In 1988 he co-wrote the Academy Award winning screenplay for the film Shakespeare In Love.
His work is marked by "verbal brilliance, ingenious action, and structural dexterity."
"The Questions Game" from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead