tragicomic

There are characters that could be cut and scenes that could be shortened, but I continue to make retrospective discoveries about the psychology and morality of a contentious family drama that, in its tragicomic extremity and bold black humor, bears comparison with Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage County.”

Banks’ and Pullman’s deliveries of these tragicomic characters elevate what could have been merely a genre exercise into something more fascinating and satirical.

After “Ways and Means” came Garrard Conley’s novel “All the World Beside,” a revisionist history of gay Puritans, and, this month, Allen Bratton’s “Henry Henry,” a tragicomic, modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Henriad whose main character is an uncompromising Catholic.

This is the tragicomic scene summoned in cardboard and packing tape by Thomas Hirschhorn, 66, a Swiss artist known since the 90s for wrestling humble materials into cacophonous installations: rows of PCs and desks, a ceiling festooned with smiley-face and purple devil emojis dangling from ropes of tape, and life-size cutouts of geared-up video game soldiers.

Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen, the Finnish stars of his latest, the tragicomic romance “Fallen Leaves,” are getting to meet both during their whirlwind tour of America at the height of Hollywood’s awards season.