Word: fiftyish
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...deft with words, genially self-mocking and ever ready to step in before the discussion gets too heavy. His best plays, The Dining Room and The Middle Ages, have been set at social events and have had the rambling, episodic quality of witty but wayward conversation. Not surprisingly, a fiftyish college professor who fancies himself capable of shaping an ideal evening is at the center of Gurney's sprightly new puzzle box of a play, The Perfect Party...
Haughton Murphy is the pseudonym of a fiftyish partner in a prestigious New York City law firm. The chief strength of his mystery Murder for Lunch (Simon & Schuster; 268 pages; $14.95) is its bemused glimpses of professional folkways. Murphy dryly observes how the size of the briefcase indicates an attorney's status: junior associates haul home thick wads of raw documents in bulky bags, while partners take away the distillate of that material: a few sheets in a thin leather envelope. He deftly sketches the ballets of protocol between august attorneys and rich parvenu clients, the ugly skirmishing between partners...
Hagen, 66, an actress's actress and a renowned teacher who is too infrequently seen in major productions, is really too old for the vibrantly sensual, fiftyish Warren. But she handles the confrontations stunningly. In the most striking moment, she wheels on her daughter, drops her posh accent and snarls a question in the gutter Cockney she spoke as a girl, revealing a whole lost life in the intonation of a few syllables. Outsize in energy but subtle in her thinking, Hagen remains among the strongest single forces on the American stage...
DIED. Jeanne Deckers, fiftyish, former Dominican Sister Luc-Gabrielle who, as Belgium's "Singing Nun," became an unlikely international pop star of the 1960s with her 1963 No. 1 hit Dominique, a 2 million seller, as well as other songs whose treacly lyrics were redeemed by her catchy melodies and high, pure voice; by her own hand (she and her female roommate took an overdose of barbiturates); in Wavre, Belgium. Deckers left her order in 1966 to pursue success in the secular world, but it had already passed her by; the home she set up for autistic children recently closed...
What this poetic approach too often misses is Williams' deft and impish sense of humor. The Glass Menagerie is autobiography in the form of a situation comedy. The first half of the play could be called "Mama's Family": Amanda Wingfield, a fiftyish matron whose husband abandoned her 15 years earlier, plots to find a "gentleman caller" who will support her and marry her shy, lame daughter Laura. In the second half, a young man does call-no gentleman, rather an awkward go-getter whose own glory days are long past-and a bittersweet romance flutters through...