Word: melodrama
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...intense symbolism of the play deteriorates into absurd melodrama; the bad attempts at making the bizarre characters seem attractive are irritating; and the very frustration of watching their slow descent into damnation makes your eyes glaze over...
...show you a woman's mind and heart. This American independent (Return of the Secaucus 7, The Brother from Another Planet) gives his movies the leisurely tempo, the sensible aspirations of foreign films; he means to get at the way real people behave, without the hysterics of Hollywood melodrama. So Passion Fish -- a female-rehab movie about May-Alice (Mary McDonnell), an actress made paraplegic in a car crash, and her helpful nurse, Chantelle (the ever splendid Alfre Woodard) -- is notable for what it doesn't show: the collision, the sight of May-Alice's mangled legs, even a clip...
...Union, managed to bring real dramatic tension to a building more often the site of food-fights than good theater. Featuring a small cast, a dynamic set and an unusual musical score by Pat Metheny, Orphans skilfully depicts the emotional turmoil of its three characters, slipping only occasionally into melodrama...
...play is an adaptation of The Revenger's Tragedy, a preposterous Elizabethan melodrama. It depicts an Italian ducal court, stuffed to the gills with lecherous courtiers. The action is chock full o' deceit and betrayal, with a healthy dose of gratuitous violence, and lashings and lashings of sexual misconduct. The original (anonymous) author was so out of control that the play ends with only three characters still standing. This production lowers the tally to zero, although the last living soul succumbs, somewhat improbably, to a chronic case of backache...
SEBASTIAN VENABLE HAS DIED. BUT how? That is the question in SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, Tennessee Williams' 1958 hothouse melodrama about prefrontal lobotomy, closet homosexuality and cannibalism. If the subject matter no longer shocks, the play itself can still thrill, given the right actors. In PBS's Great Performances presentation, it has them, mostly. Maggie Smith, as Sebastian's aloof, vindictive mother, and especially Natasha Richardson, as his possibly insane cousin, who was with him when he died, are superb adversaries, both of them informing Williams' lyrical dialogue with the rich emotional life it must have. Only Rob Lowe fails, more...