Word: contrivedness
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Albee is exorcising his own demons in having the dowager deny her homosexual son. Strikingly, he keeps the son mute and gives the mother her uninterrupted say. The counterpoint between his deathbed devotion and her strident evocation of a showdown years before could feel contrived. Like all of this chamber...
Had Keillor relied more on his ability to make the mundane funny, this collection would have been a better one. As they stand, most of these stories place male characters in strange and impossible settings, where Keillor's humor loses almost all of its edge. The Book of Guys comes...
The actors do their best to maintain some sort of serio-dramatic tone throughout the play. Without a strong script and meaningful character development, players are forced to rely on exaggerated gestures and movement to get their points across. Perhaps overemphasizing Merlyn's innocence, James Patterson, as the title character...
In a movie with such a mainstream big-name cast, there can only be one happy ending to please the mass market; it is predictable from an early stage and ultimately undermines the suspense which the movie attempts to build. Director and writer Steve Kloves stocks "Flesh and Bone" full...
While Rice created a complex and believable interplay of voices in The Witching Hour, she fails to incorporate the same technique in Lasher. Her attempt at weaving together various narrative strands feels false and a bit too contrived. A great deal of Lasher reiterates the story lines which unfolded in...