Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...summons a deep brooding energy which seems to be the result of all his regrets. Unsatisfied by his students, he asks the shutters to be closed so that he can be surrounded by darkness. He's prompted to be introspective and then proceeds into the story of Sainte Colombe. Plot sequences flow effortlessly like Sainte Colombe's playing...
...production of The Mother, originally seen on the Philco Television Playhouse in 1954, is something of a revelation. By today's lights, it seems rather dated, obvious and slight. The plot is minimal: despite her children's pleas, a 66-year-old widow insists on looking for work. She manages to get a job as a seamstress but is fired after one day. Depressed and lonely, she spends a night with her daughter and son-in-law. Then she decides to try again. Fade...
Handsome couple, swell clothes, upper-crust settings, smart, sexually sparring dialogue and a plot device that contrives to keep the pair apart until you think you -- and they -- are about to burst. It worked in 1939. It worked in 1957, when it was retitled An Affair to Remember. It even worked last year when it was extensively quoted in Sleepless in Seattle. How is it, then, that Love Affair doesn't work...
When her players feel love, they describe "a light in your eyes...that makes the chair, the clock, the table look luminous." Unfortunately, as the audience loses its grasp on the plot, the lyrical beauty of the language only serves to highlight the play's schematic shortcomings...
...talented performances of the cast provide some focus for an audience left reeling by the plot's peaks and valleys. It's unfortunate that the directors and producer couldn't choose a script which would match up to the standards of the cast. McCullers, "master of melancholy," was unable to find the vital balance which makes tragicomedy work as a drama. As a result, "The Square Root of Wonderful" is little more than a leaky life raft which can barely hold this--or any--cast of talented actors out of the treacherous waters of dramatic confusion...