Word: helene
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Helen Chichester-Redfern, a terminal cancer patient who lives in the same English cathedral town as Hermitage. A deathbed friendship is struck, along with a sizzling affair with Mrs. C.-R.'s daughter Dinah, a churchgoing guitarist and bedroom athlete with the sexual etiquette of a praying mantis...
Nobody complained when Opera Diva Helen Traubel sang at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry. But James Brown, the king of soul, at the shrine of country music? Well, that is noncountry royalty of a different kind, on account of all the king's funky songs. Insisted Pianist Del Wood, one of a pride of Opry regulars protesting
...setting is a New Hampshire church hall. The occasion is a wedding rehearsal that never does take place. The bride-to-be is Annie (Kathleen Quinlan). She is accompanied by her Aunt Helen (Elizabeth Wilson), her older sister Andrea (Meryl Streep) and her mother Ruth (Nancy Marchand), an unresigned widow. (Colleen Dewhurst played Ruth for a few performances but withdrew because of a prior commitment.) A fifth woman distinctly jars this ostensibly patrician clan. Dixie Avalon (Dixie Carter) is a breezy, purse-swinging entertainer who has been hired by one of the absent menfolk to sing Oh Promise Me, apparently...
...Annie because Daddy loved her more. Five marriages have not appeased her sense of loss. Out of vengeance or whim she has carried on an affair with Annie's fiance. Callously neglected by her late husband, Ruth fervently argues that loyalty and fidelity are above price. Only Aunt Helen has shared untarnished love in a lesbian idyl with an aviatrix now long dead. It is an odd angle of vision that per mits Playwright Babe to present this as the sole satisfactory relationship...
...nails on which she some times lies in self-contempt. As Ruth, Dewhurst was a Rock of Gibraltar. Marchand is better suited to the role, a homebody with artistic impulses who needs a hus band for ballast. Though she has her cranky moments, Wilson's Aunt Helen is a lamp of sanity, and if anyone could lift the evening out of the dumps, trust Carter's resilient Dixie. The pity is that these five remarkable actresses have been taken in miscarriage...