Word: kempinski
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...felled by multiple sclerosis. The role, played on Broadway by Bancroft, now extracts one of Julie Andrews' strongest performances. Fighting the disease and its accompanying despair, stoking her own infidelity and her husband's, displaying the terminal patient's luxury of being both noble and bitter, Andrews transforms Tom Kempinski's case history into a metaphor for middle age. Stephanie could be any careerist facing a mid-life crisis of confidence -- Is she at her peak or past it? -- or the cripple any woman feels herself to be when her man goes randying after younger bodies and more pliant hearts...
DUET FOR ONE by Tom Kempinski...
...Kempinski's play is a melancholy partita-two characters, six scenes-about a brilliant violinist struck down in her prime by multiple sclerosis, and the psychiatrist who tries to help her. The plot may seem a tasteless gloss on the career-ending disease of Cellist Jacqueline du Pré. But in its London version, there were no easy answers-no answers at all-for this driven young woman. As played by Frances de la Tour, she was a figure of shy, rueful dignity who achieved heroism by confronting her despair...
...notable for its harrowing power, not its subtlety. This leaves Max von Sydow, as the doctor, to prowl the set like a lion tamer confronting an unpredictable new beast. He need not worry. Bancroft's lioness isn't hungry enough to eat him. She has already devoured Kempinski's lamb of a play...