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I missed this when it happened, but there was a revival, a few years ago, of the Marx Brothers’ big breakout, which unlike Animal Crackers and Monkey Business did not receive a film adaptation and had been considered a lost musical for decades. Per Adam Gopnik:
“The pre-jazz operetta, slightly ragtime music was, Diamond knew, essential to the effect: without that roistering tone, however dated, one can’t register the Marxes’ seismographic surprises.”
Yes! That’s one of the Laws of the Marx Brothers’ Universe – there always has to be a fairly conventional sub-Romberg operetta going on in the background, which the brothers then disrupt, although most of the chorus never seem to fully register the weirdness going on in front of them.
“In need of brothers to join him in the pursuit, Diamond enlisted Seth Shelden, a brilliant young intellectual-property lawyer who was just returning from a Fulbright fellowship in Latvia.”
That actually sounds like perfect training to become Harpo. One must know what not to do.
“The object of the Marxes’ comedy is anarchy, but its subject is fraternity: they are in it together to the end. Zeppo’s inclusion in the family made the others less like clowns and more like brothers.”
I always view Zeppo as the Marx who, being the youngest, is best able to pass. He serves as interpreter between them and the regular humans (if you can apply that diagnosis to the inhabitants of this ruffled operetta-world).
“There is a hair-raising photograph of the four Marxes in their youth… that shows them hungry and beautiful and looking exactly like either an anarchist cell or a gathering of Futurist painters, or maybe both.”
“The pre-jazz operetta, slightly ragtime music was, Diamond knew, essential to the effect: without that roistering tone, however dated, one can’t register the Marxes’ seismographic surprises.”
Yes! That’s one of the Laws of the Marx Brothers’ Universe – there always has to be a fairly conventional sub-Romberg operetta going on in the background, which the brothers then disrupt, although most of the chorus never seem to fully register the weirdness going on in front of them.
“In need of brothers to join him in the pursuit, Diamond enlisted Seth Shelden, a brilliant young intellectual-property lawyer who was just returning from a Fulbright fellowship in Latvia.”
That actually sounds like perfect training to become Harpo. One must know what not to do.
“The object of the Marxes’ comedy is anarchy, but its subject is fraternity: they are in it together to the end. Zeppo’s inclusion in the family made the others less like clowns and more like brothers.”
I always view Zeppo as the Marx who, being the youngest, is best able to pass. He serves as interpreter between them and the regular humans (if you can apply that diagnosis to the inhabitants of this ruffled operetta-world).
“There is a hair-raising photograph of the four Marxes in their youth… that shows them hungry and beautiful and looking exactly like either an anarchist cell or a gathering of Futurist painters, or maybe both.”
