Guess who' s describing who as "built like an office safe

 I'm looking forward to seeing the Keen Company's  revival of  Paddy Chayefsky's  Middle of  the Night.  Still,   Maureen Dowd's  NYTimes Op Ed  (Still Mad as Hell, Feb. 8, 2014, I  can't  help wishing they'd  opted  Chayefsky  by  doing is   terrific and more scarily timely than ever  <i>Network</i> .

 Of course, any  production with  Chayefsky-line  is  worth seeing and  makes anyone old enough to remember yearn for  the wonderful  stuff  seen on the home screen during the golden era of TV plays.

Collins  piece  described   the   late writer, who died of cancer in 1981  as   bedraggled and “built like an office safe.”

Christopher Plummer-- shy as a hand grenade

The 84-year-old Christopher Plummer  wrote an autobiographical  solo show  for himself in which he   offers himself up as a humble vassal to the likes of Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, and Rudyard Kipling who gave comfort during his painful boyhood, buffeted by his parents' divorce.


Soon, Wilde and others became the vessels by which he transformed himself into a jaded gentleman about as "shy as a hand grenade." 

To read  our LA critic's  review, click the link below
www.curtainup.com/wordor2la.html

You'll soon meet a "with recriminations pouring out of his mouth like bad greeting cards."

 It's been fifteen years since I saw  Donald Margulies's   Pulitzer Prize winning marital drama  Dinner With Friends.  I therefore look forward  to  revisiting  its  two  couples. courtesy  of  the Roundabout Theater's revival  at  its Laura Pels theater.   In  the meantime   a  simile  which  I assume  remains in  the  script:

A  wife's  husband  walks out on her with a tirade of recriminations " pouring out of his mouth like bad greeting cards."

Downton"Edith: about as mysterious as a bucket

 The January 19th episode of Downton Abbey provides this  amusing simile from  Lady Mary:

“Edith is about as mysterious as a bucket.”

Fretful as a bird --that's a character in Jon Fosse play

In  his review of  Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse's play, I Am the Wiind   our critic   uses this simile to  describe  one of its  key characters:

The Other is aptly named. Occasionally playful, but mostly fretful as a bird

Metaphors that would be effective similes

"A play is a poem standing up." -Federico Garcia Lorca

This is  one of  those  metaphors  that  with the  addition of  "like" would  be as effective as a  simile

a home rehearsed & scheduled like a Broadway show shelters best seller's narrator

 The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt,  is one   of this past year's  most popular new novels  While  it's not something  that could move  from page to  stage,  it  does suffer from  a flaw I've  seen  recur  in many new plays,: It  seems to  end, but then goes on  for another ending. . .and then another one.   That said,  Tartt  did provide me with some  apt  tropes  to  proof that  no  dictionary like Similes Dictionary or  Metaphors  Dictionary  is  ever finished.

The  very  readable  novel   turned up  several apt  additions  to   the  new Simile Dictionary's   existing  head words:

For PALLOR,  ,  Tartt described someone as  pale as a cod,  and  a young man who was thin as well as pale as   thin and pale as a starved poet.

For STUPIDITY,  there was  a young woman  as   dumb as a set of  sofa cushions.

Fitting  ORDER/DISORDER,  an orderly  household  that  provided  temporarily  shelter to the  displaced  main character was described as one  where everything was rehearsed and scheduled like a Broadway production.

Suitable  for  DISAPPEARANCE,  Tartt   introduced someone who   vanished as quickly as a bird flying from a  windowsill.

In  one of  the  narrator's  many moments   to fit the heading  DISCOMFORT,  he felt    as uneasy and conspicuous as a dreamer wandering naked in a nightmare.

For the Metaphors Dictionary,  I was struck  by   a scene  about an awkward attempt at conversation described as follows:     Efforts to make conversation all stumbled and sank into  quicksand.