Word: nasality
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Peter Shaffer (Equus, Amadeus) wrote this as a showcase for Dame Maggie Smith, the two-time Oscar winner who was last seen on Broadway in Tom Stoppard's Night and Day in 1979. All her trademark mannerisms are in evidence, from the nasal drawl of contempt to the wounded-crow flutter of arms and hands. So is the open-wound vulnerability that brings her fey lunacy back to earth. She takes a character who is mostly an idea, a conceit -- a person for whom pretending is more real than reality -- and invests her with poignancy and pride. In spirit Lettice...
...smaller and more delicate than she appears in pictures, her voice higher and more nasal than on her records. There is a solidity about her, a muscular spirituality. Her element is earth, not air. A master of silence, she does not talk about what she doesn't know. Mostly, she is wary, skeptical...