Word: overwrought
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...Reinhardt plays Hotspur at too high a pitch, Impetuosity, excitement, and vigor would suffice but he gives us an overwrought, almost frantic, interpretation that lacks all subtlety. Hotspur's ineptness was matched by Franklin Cover's Owen Glendower. The splendid and famous interchange between the two--"I can call spirits from the vasty deep." "Why, so can I, or so can any man;/But will they come when you do call for them?"--has no life and no wit, save what is in the lines. Reinhardt as Pistol in the second part shows greater understanding of his role, and provides...
...himself. The paths of keynote-speech glory lead but to the political grave, it seems. Republican Arthur Langlie and Democrat Frank Clement, the 1956 keynoters, are both politically jobless. And Democrats might well worry a bit about Frank Church's florid oratorical style, ominously reminiscent of the embarrassingly overwrought tirade that Tennessee's Governor Clement gushed forth in 1956 ("How long, oh how long, America?"). Perhaps as a hint of things to come. Church last week managed to pack two cliches into a single sentence. He intended to "pull no punches" in his keynote speech, he vowed...
...with the Trotskyite opposition. Last week, defeated on a technical vote of no confidence, Senanayake gave up, asked Ceylon's Governor General Sir Oliver Goonetilleke to dissolve Parliament and call new elections in July. By then, Senanayake hoped, Ceylon's voters would be less susceptible to an overwrought widow's overworked tears, return the U.N.P. with a workable majority...
...Crucible also suffers from an occasional note of strain and shrillness in the writing, and this is pointed up by Michael Murray's somewhat overwrought direction, which tends too much toward stealthy, wildly disarrayed entrances and impassioned throwings to the ground. The play needs this sort of effect, and would be dull if Mr. Miller had not contrived frequent occasion for it; but Mr. Murray does not know quite when to stop. However, he has handled several of the crises with great skill...
...Behind the coupled heroes, the moviemakers have sketched a mud-grimed tableau of the blood-happy townsmen giving chase and a soul-weary sheriff-played to sunken-eyed, raspy-throated perfection by Theodore Bikel. If Sidney Poitier's wild-eyed, bare-fanged portrayal of Cullen is overwrought, it has at least prodded Teen-Agitator Curtis into the first performance of his career that will incline the old folks to a modest whoop...