The Hundred Years’ War Certainly Did Drag On
Ben BrantleyJune 7, 2012: Bloated, gaseous, archly self-conscious and on occasion truly funny, Kenneth Lonergan’s “Medieval Play” is like a vintage “Saturday Night Live” sketch that won’t die. Imagine a skit from, say, the mid-1970s, in which John Belushi and Chevy Chase portray violent, inept knights clunking around in cumbersome armor and talking about looting and plundering in goofy pseudo-chivalric speech. Now imagine that for some reason this is a night when the show’s guest host and its musical stars have disappeared, and the word comes that Chevy, John, Gilda, et alia must keep on with this particular sketch until otherwise notified. And because of technical problems, it’s impossible to cut to a commercial, so the cameras keep rolling. And rolling. And rolling.
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