Word: melodrama
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...pace and characters of a thriller, but little else to suggest that it was written by the glib and cheeky author of Grisham's legal entertainments. His tough first novel, the courtroom rouser A Time to Kill, is a closer match, but there Grisham played by the rules of melodrama: the hero won. Here the winner is something called process, the orderly, unemotional, bureaucratic march through the necessary steps before a convict may be poisoned by cyanide in Mississippi's gas chamber...
...second U.S. appearance ever and first since 1981. For his fans, Communicating Doors marks an end to a period when his works grew darker and darker, to the point that they could scarcely be called comedies. "This is intentionally lighter," Ayckbourn says of his souffle of time travel, murder, melodrama and bedroom farce. "It's also meant to be affirmative after things have grown steadily worse in Britain under governments that seem not to care...
...Zhang's Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern. Nikita Mikhalkov intended his Burned by the Sun as a Russian Gone With the Wind, a story of country life amid the turmoil of tyranny, but it was meandering and cloying. As for Patrice Chereau's Queen Margot, an epic melodrama set in Huguenot times starring Adjani, it had Hollywood values galore: dark intrigue, plenty of body hacking and bodice ripping, and a budget of $25 million, France's largest ever. But the picture was a mess. That Zhang and Mikhalkov shared the second-place Grand Jury Prize was seen...
...Tony Award front runner for best revival and best set -- a category rarely won by a straight play -- is the London import An Inspector Calls, a drawing- room melodrama exploded into a streetscape of urban despair. The opening scenes are daringly played inside an enclosed mini-mansion that gradually opens and finally topples, a metaphor for the collapse of capitalism. Brilliant as the effect is, one wonders whether the creators realize what economic system actually did fall apart in recent years...
...MARCUS LOVETT, who was winding up a stint as the lead in the long-running The Phantom of the Opera. Lovett had to learn Carousel in a mere two days -- and went on to critical huzzahs. Amazingly, this wasn't the first time Broadway life has imitated corny backstage melodrama...