Word: cowards
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...they keep it open to the public--the tempo of loss has slowed. But there are few estates that do not face their annual nightmare of rising damp, falling cornices, skyrocketing repair bills and shrinking rents. These shared threats induce the mood of solidarity fondly guyed by Noel Coward decades ago: "Though if the Van Dycks have to go/ And we pawn the Bechstein Grand,/ We'll stand/ By the Stately Homes of England." As one should, for there is no parallel to the stubborn integrity of their collections among the stripped and much-looted palaces across the Channel...
Schwarzenegger's pursuit of his enemies. He shoots them, drops them off cliffs, slits their throats, chops off their arms, breaks their necks, and blows them up. And, oh, yes: he also punches a steam pipe through his archenemy. "Let off some steam," he snarls--not exactly Noel Coward wit, but it is one of Schwarzenegger's favorite lines in the script. "The thing that separates me from the rest of the action leads, like Stallone, Eastwood and Norris, is that I bring in all this humor to my films," he says. "I love that, to have all this intensity...
...every turn, Hav's storybook past collides with the neon present. The annual Roof Race, Europe's oddest sporting event, sends multinational Havians sprinting across the peeling ruins left by Athenian, Czarist and British occupations. Noel Coward and Nijinsky played here in Hav's heyday; Nazis hid out among its elite residents. Present-day Havians are baffling shadows. The last pretender to the Turkish caliphate, a principal shareholder in Hav TV, tries to marry Morris to his vizier. She sips coffee with a Chinese financial pirate and recognizes a bartender at the opulent casino from his days at Harry...
...exceedingly wealthy Edwina Ashley. It was a stormy union, marked by his many affairs and her infatuations, including one with Jawaharlal Nehru, but it lasted until Edwina's death in 1960. Stationed in Malta in the late '20s, the couple kept a 66-ton yacht in the harbor. Noel Coward, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and an assortment of royals were their houseguests...
...times Wingrove does allow things to get stuffy in an unfunny way. The rahther heavy English accents and the constant over-acting are initially acceptable, but as the play wears on the over-acting wears thin and the over-Oxbridge intonations make Coward's dry witticisms positively and Coward's eternally fresh wit is enough to sustain interest, but one almost wishes a kid from Brooklyn would wander in for a change of pace. Something more in the way of contrast is needed; Lisa Peers, as the straightforward cockney maid, comes close to fitting the bill...