numbing

Mr. Leguizamo eases up on the ferociously funny clowning at which he is so expert to emphasize Nelson’s frantic desperation to avoid having to admit he has failed his family, numbing his anxieties with booze.

But sometime over this last winter — that numbing, hoary stretch between mid-February and March — I decided this might be the year to reclaim a bit of seasonal delight.

"Is it, in fact, unhealthy and desensitising and numbing to feel joy when we're surrounded by so much suffering?" he asks.

Thus, the challenge of continuously documenting and sounding the alarm about how abnormal and dangerous the Age of Trump is while never normalizing it as being somehow quotidian, and therefore numbing.

These nimble performers gamely rise to the occasion, but the comic adrenaline at this point has a numbing effect.