Word: brattishness
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...then the book carries echoes of Lucky Jim's brattish humor, and Author Amis remains a shrewd, accurate observer of what sociologists call courtship patterns. He also has a message of sorts. After a particularly hectic session, Patrick tells Jenny bitterly that there are two kinds of men these days, the sort who despoil maidens as often as possible and the sort who have no desire to do so. The kind who wanted to but waited, he says, died...
...pointless success, stealing trinkets for the excitement of it and giving them away. It is only after Charley is caught that Gary's book makes a descent into sentiment, coming closer to Dickens than to Evelyn Waugh, who also told (in his hilarious Put Out More Flags) of brattish evacuees on the loose in the English countryside. But the sentimental flaw is minor, and the book makes its point well: adolescence is a chrysalis whose occupant can be hurt, but not helped much, by the world outside...
...gives indications he will provide. Set in a place somewhere in Louisiana that is not altogether unlike a Williams, a Faulkner, a Welty locale, Kopit's play concerns the visit of an old school friend to the home of a robust insurance man, his supremely sensitive wife, and their brattish children. The visitor, Emmanuel Moon, a graciously sinister spectre, says he has come to collect on an adolescent promise made by George "Chopper" Feering, a raging "bull" who raised living standards in the country by convincing dying old men to buy insurance instead of medical care...
...making desperate attempts to be friendly, but the children are far too coony to be taken in. "What's this," sneers the older boy when Father tries to teach him how to fish, "the Huckleberry Finn approach?" And when he mildly reproves the younger son for some particularly brattish behavior, Sophia indignantly tells him: "Try to be a parent, not a policeman." In the end, when Father is reduced to gibbering ineffectiveness, the woman calmly and efficiently takes over and puts the poor man out of his misery by marrying him. At this point the children determine to assert...
With Anne's own brattish or girlish part in the group, the play also succeeds. In her more personal scenes, where a secret self must be made vocal and visual, she sometimes falls short. There is nothing so private as a diary or so public as a stage, and the two, at times, refuse to dovetail. Again, certain loudspeakered diary passages take on the tone of bulletins. But a play that very largely succeeds with its material everywhere respects it, and in her limelighted Broadway debut, 17-year-old Susan Strasberg plays Anne with obvious talent and much animation...