Every sentence seems to be on the point of curling into a joke; characters are forever spawning a host of eccentric offspring.
Helen is a one-joke character, but in this sketch the joke is rich.
He is a one-joke character, but he slowly gains the role of Custer's conscience, keeping him in line by reigning in his more vengeful instincts.
Mr. Simmons and Mr. Wayans, irrepressible showboaters, overshadow the two remaining conspirators, a Vietnamese general (Tzi Ma) and a dumb football player (Ryan Hurst), who are pretty much one-joke characters.
Where Grimes universalises its personal drama, Herring confines it, with its Aldeburgh in-jokes (characters' names drawn from the community in which Britten lived, for instance), its musical parodies and pastiches and, above all, its fastidious refusal to get to grips with the question of Albert's sexual repression, which should be the emotional core of the drama.
"Fragrant Harbor," which takes its title from the meaning of the territory's name ("Chinese joke," one character says, about the harbor's aroma), has an unusual structure.
With her insistence on the transformative — not to mention fatal — charms of a good joke, the character of Matilde might seem dubiously quirky, but Ms. Aspillaga humanizes her with ease, tempering warmth with a deadpan sense of timing.
Hilarious jokes, outrageous characters, quality music.
In an age when much stand-up comedy can seem like a meticulous accounting of personal anxieties and observations, Mr. Friedlander delivers jokes in character.
