You won't find a lab technician who gets paid millions for his impressive pipetting skills, and flimsy lab coats with his name on aren't sold for £50 each in the high street.
His characters are robotic silhouettes spouting gaudily profane wisdom that is dispensed two hundred and eighty characters at a time; his excellent actors have to sweat every line, weigh every gesture, and pose every gaze, pouring every ounce of their skill into humanizing the flimsy simulacra that are written for them.
But what Australian rugby fans have seen instead has been three error-strewn performances, marred by poor ball skills, bad decision-making and flimsy defense, which has resulted in Australia's sliding to fourth in the world rankings behind New Zealand, South Africa and England.
The rest of the cast delivers Donizetti's score with courage and skill, but the material is about as flimsy as the production design, which features essentially one costume for both Anne and her confidant-cum-conspirator Jane Seymour (the impressive Jamie Barton) and a ceiling that occasionally reveals a few interesting backdrops.
The arrival of Muslim migrants and the spread of Christianity by American missionaries have not dispelled local superstitions.In this section The Lady of all landslides Snooping dogs Lee Toil and trouble "We only receive back the bodies" A rather flimsy firewall ReprintsIn rural Assam the ojha, a traditional medicine man, is revered for his skills at countering black magic.
"All this evening proves is that a play as bland and flimsy as this requires actors who are not only heroically talented but who also have formidable skills," wrote The Guardian critic Lyn Gardner at the time.
Even as a child with limited money and shaky wrapping skills, I could still buy a mass market paperback for everyone in my family, swathe it in flimsy, drugstore wrapping paper and stack them all under the tree in an orderly pile... and in plenty of time to catch The March of the Wooden Soldiers on Channel 11.
David Browne of Entertainment Weekly remarked that there was "something oddly flimsy" about No Doubt that prevented it from becoming a milestone in pop music, but that the band's "party-throwing skills improve with each new gathering".
