Word: dickensians
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...line with the court's recent law-and-order tilt, there was a surprise dissenter: conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Arguing that a 24-hour delay was the constitutional limit, Scalia fumed, "Hereafter a law-abiding citizen wrongfully arrested may be compelled to await the grace of a Dickensian bureaucratic machine as it churns its cycle for up to two days...
...stars, Lea Salonga as Kim and Jonathan Pryce as the Engineer. The Broadway production has three. Pryce and Salonga are repeating (indeed, enhancing) their West End triumphs. She is incandescently in command of the stage; he still gets the sardonic laughs owed to his Dickensian lampoon of a conniver, yet has transmuted him into a full-blown tragic figure, a victim of global politics all the sadder for being so streetwise. They are joined in the spotlight by Willy Falk in the role of Kim's G.I. lover, Chris, a part that was a cipher in London. Falk finds charm...
...stereotype of the wily Oriental. This is a man driven to sleaziness by circumstance, a man born to command business but victimized by his race, nationality, time and place. Far from a racist act, Pryce's performance is a deep draft of humanity -- while missing none of the almost Dickensian slime...
Hart's stilted prose style, in its attempt to create a sensual yet literary story, kills all the emotion that this potentially erotic plot could have elicited. Hart tries frantically to use as many adjectives as possible and ends up with amateurish Dickensian overkill--the story and characters are utterly unbelievable...
...Dickensian overtones are impossible to ignore. John's situation seems a direct conflation of Great Expectations and Bleak House: he has the hope that his fortunes may improve and the knowledge that, if he survives, he may spend the rest of his days in fruitless litigation. But his adventures call to mind a host of other Victorian novels as well. He is sent briefly to a Yorkshire school and enters the harsh world of Nicholas Nickleby; he overhears a former governess tell her life story, and the events and diction take on the coloration of Jane Eyre...