Word: hectoring
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...pinch increased, Trujillo's brother Hector, who is the puppet President, wrote to the "Father of the New Fatherland" and "Financial Emancipator of the Nation" that it would be a "patriotic duty" for the bureaucracy to donate their December salaries to the cause. Lieut. General Rafael ("Ramfis") Trujillo Jr. permanently renounced his $3,000 monthly, salary as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Soon El Caribe blossomed with a solid page of names of army officers, cops and party hacks who hastened to say that they were delighted to kick in. But when the government proposed canceling Christmas...
Shotover's son-in-law Hector is another of Shaw's Chinese-puzzle characters, whose identity opens up like a box to reveal a new one underneath, leaving him a paradox that is never resolved. One of his personae is that of the romantic hero, with a moustache "like a bronze candlestick" and a general air of being a cross between the Prisoner of Zenda and Henry V. Hector is also a boaster and a liar and his wife's lapdog, but he is so totally footling and gormless in Dennis Price's portrayal that his cries of agony...
There are some better performances among the seven stars. As Shotover's indescribable daughter Hesione, Diana Wynward is splendid, and Pamela Brown is at least intriguing as her sister Ariadne, Lady Utterword. (They are not the "demon women" Hector describes, but that is Shaw's fault more than theirs.) Ellie Dunn, who begins as a romantic ingenue and becomes one of the quietly scary, hard-as-nails young women only Shaw could create, is played well enough by Diane Cilento...
...woeful misconception of Shotover and Hector throws the play irretrievably out of focus, converting it into an unsuccessful attempt at mild country-house comedy. Alan Webb, Sorrell Booke, and Patrick Horgan are excellent in roles that can be played like refugees from Noel Coward; but Shaw had incomparably greater things in mind...
...Observatory on Garden St., staff member Hector Ingrao will try to photograph the eclipse with a 15-inch refractor...