The play's final, more somber notes land with surprising force, but the path from comedy to something closer to tragedy gets a bit rocky at times.
The mood is more somber in Harborfields, which was forced to adopt an austerity budget after two failures at the polls.
But on a more somber level, the reader is forced to confront one of the darkest periods in the nation's history not just with cold statistics -- Carter includes enough of those -- but as personal struggle and tragedy.
As the somber introduction masses the orchestra's forces, a sense of Pink Pantherish humor lurks behind the music; something is about to happen, but what?
Eight air force colonels carried the coffin, draped in the blue-and-white Israeli flag, into an air force hangar for a somber gathering of the Ramon family, Israeli leaders and American representatives.
When it rejected Hate Crime, it didn't express somber disappointment that it had been forced to limit speech in order to protect the public from harm.
And in the amorphous, somber reaches beyond the inlet, great unseen forces were clashing, and creatures were on the move.
In a somber statement to the House of Commons, the armed forces minister, Adam Ingram, said that despite suspicions that the photographs, which were published over the weekend in The Daily Mirror, had been faked, the Royal Military Police would conduct a thorough investigation.
There was none of the somber tone that might be expected after government forces killed dozens in the past two weeks and demonstrators in several cities challenged the president's authority.
To some, however, nods to a somber national mood carried out in party dress seem forced.
