Word: isabell
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...contrasted 19th century American "innocence" with Old World decadence and guile. Assured, high-mettled Isabel Archer wants ardently to live without knowing too much about life. She rejects the safe and familiar, only to marry a corruptly overcultivated expatriate who wants only her money. The awakening is hideous; but having made her bed of spikes, Isabel sentences herself...
Sliced paper-thin for the stage, and acted in an emotional treble by Cinemactress Jennifer Jones (making her Broadway debut), Isabel seemed largely pushed about by the plot. The whole play was Henry James glimpsed from a train window in the rain; only here or there emerged a recognizable face or voice...
While Archibald's play fails this goal, a gifted actress as Isabel might have attained it. Unfortunately, Jennifer Jones has at this point so little control over the role that she seems to leave it unattended on the stage. In the first act, when Isabel must prove worthy of interest, Miss Jones may well have had her lines on flash cards. Though her words had more conviction in later scenes, there remained the disturbing sense that she was hearing the director: "six steps to the left; wring hands." Miss Jones as Miss Jones learning a part has neither charm...
...intriguing Serena Merle, ineptly introduced by Archibald, is a major disappointment. While she sails imposingly about the stage, she evokes less "the wisest woman in the world" than the grande dame of Kansas City. Director Jose Quintero, however, must take the blame for allowing one outrageous failure. As Isabel's uncle, Halliwell Hobbes does a prolonged parody of Lionel Barrymore and exits with the rending cackle of a road-show Silas Marner...
...others succeed to a remarkable degree. Douglas Watson is an affecting Ralph, gentle without being wispy as Isabel's consumptive adorer. Though given no chance to hint at the charm and initial love which wins Isabel's hand, Robert Flemyng's Osmund is to perfection the egoistic tyrant the script prescribes. With Archibald's assist, however, one performance makes all the others seem drab. Cathleen Nesbitt draws from the role of Osmund's vulgar sister a vibrant bitterness which bursts from the genteel monotony of the play. Her acid interpretation, less dilute with silliness than James' conception, gives the lines...