drollness

On the other hand, he never neglects the warmth or the drollness of his character.

A little more and I would have gone into screaming fits at the drollness of it."

He had the deadpan drollness that goes with many large men who are sparing of speech.

Beckett answered, with characteristic drollness, "You must be very tired."

Lester seemed to miss my drollness and asked, "And you're also the attorney for her will?"

In the hands of a less elegant broadcaster, such drollness can be a fumbled card trick.

Even the distortion of their relative distances did not quite rob the remark of its drollness.

It's a family comedy and tearjerker both, with alternating currents of drollness and darkness.

Everyone knows the peroxide hair (now grey), the big glasses and the deep-voiced Yorkshire drollness.

Then when I remembered whom I spoke to, the drollness caught me and made me laugh.

"Welcome back aboard Enterprise," Archer said, inflating his words with an air of laconic drollness.

He has a silent clown's gift for physical comedy as well as a drollness in handling his character's acerbic insults.

The drollness of that comment matches the tone of the series, which has a wry Canadian vein of humor running through it.

John Lee Beatty's set, which puts the audience backstage looking at the actors and the critical contingent, has its own drollness.

Bill Irwin is a personification of drollness in his ensemble clown show, "Largely/New York."

Mr. Moody sang the number as "Benny's From Heaven," with appropriate drollness.

But this reliance on context to achieve the requisite drollness poses an interesting problem for the McSweeney's writers.

For several seasons, Mr. Phillips has been enlivening the New York theater with his drollness.

As research for the transformation, he must have been studying Jackie Mason, emulating his accent and the drollness of his delivery.

As a storyteller, Mr. Earley also has a sympathy with the sincerity and drollness of folk art.

("Odd," remarks Sebastian, with deadpan drollness, "as I knew her to be a person who primarily took baths.")

Harnessing the twin virtues of drollness and economy, Mr. Tully keeps scenes brief and melodrama on the margins.

Mr. Waterston plays a patrician financier with a touch of drollness, a man of power who does not fit into the Establishment.

More than anything, it is the actor's drollness that helps invigorate this creaky vehicle, revived at the Williamstown Theater Festival.

Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times once called Mr. Sherman "a clown of extraordinary drollness."