Word: hilt
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...actors in this otherwise undistinguished cast give truly outstanding peformances. Among these is Kristi Trostel, who plays Julia Shuttlethwaite. She plays the role of the obnoxious busybody to the hilt. Her hand gestures, her diction and her stage presence are all fantastic. Her performance is terrific except for one minor detail. It seems that a woman of Julia's social standing would not constantly let her stockings sag around her ankles...
...post-Watergate world, we have all become suckers for smoking guns and Murphy exploits this weakness in his readers to the hilt. His telling of the confirmation hearings is breathtaking, with Strom Thurmond, Sam Ervin and others titans of the Senate's conservative wing desperately trying to pin down their cagey witness, while Murphy treats his readers to the bombshells that his inquisitors never could draw...
ACTING is falsehood. Or so it is in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, in which a love-entangled quarter of theater people, so used to faking emotions on stage, cannot feel emotions off stage. They resort to biting wordplay that is done to the hilt in the polished but ultimately sterile Winthrop production...
...easier task falls to the second coach. Everyone views him and his team as an underdog from the start. He can play that roll to the hilt. Often this coach will credit the victory not only to his players but to the Great Referee in the Sky. This speech will often resemble the preamble to a constitution or a series of "Hail Marys." Some coaches will even ask those in attendance to bow their heads and give thanks...
Most of the credit, though, belongs to the actors, who all overplay to the hilt. Adam Schwartz creates a perfectly blustery and "bully" Teddy Roosevelt--er, Teddy Brewster. Josh Frost is chilling as Jonathan, and thanks to Melanie Deas' make-up skills (I hope), he really does look like Boris Karloff. As the old aunts, Molly Bishop and Jennifer Donaldson find a surprisingly childish glee in their chemical activities...