Word: plowright
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...outrageous talk and copious quantities of alcohol and tobacco. Monica (Julie Walters), the divorced mother of the bride, is all domestic bustle, dark thoughts held at bay by her many tasks -- remaking her awful old wedding dress for her daughter, considering the canapes for the reception. Mrs. Monro (Joan Plowright), the mother of the groom, sleeps a lot, awakening to express in a rumbly purr her dismay with just about everything...
...Fisher (Joan Plowright), a crusty matron, was once an intimate of Ruskin and Rossetti, as she will remind you without prompting. Lady Caroline (Polly Walker) might be a pre-Raphaelite princess, but adrift in the jazz age and bored by the clammy attentions men pay her. The others, Lottie (Josie Lawrence) and Rose (Miranda Richardson), are trussed in marriages that seem more like mergers. Lottie's husband, an attorney, wants her to be a housemaid and party ornament. Rose's husband, a writer, wants her to stay at home, out of his lightly lecherous way, and tend the emptiness...
...four sorceresses are splendid: Plowright in high Lady Bracknell form, accommodating herself to happiness; Walker, sensationally poised and pretty, radiating a soigne sexiness; Richardson (Dance with a Stranger) as a sad Madonna doomed to fidelity; and Lawrence, a TV comedy star, as a liberated slave gaily savoring her freedom...
...tony cast members are made to play against their strengths. Kline buckles under the burden of an Italian accent not heard since the passing of Chico Marx. Ullman tamps down her TV exuberance and meekly disappears into the black hole of her role. Joan Plowright, a grande dame of English theater, plays a Yugoslav granny, and loses. William Hurt, as a dim doper hired to kill Joey, works beyond his range and beneath his gifts. The same may be said of Kasdan. The director of Body Heat and The Big Chill now wastes his time on the movie equivalent...
...NIGHTINGALE SANG (PBS, Oct. 15, 9 p.m. on most stations). Joan Plowright plays the matriarch of a working-class British family during World War II in this adaptation of C.P. Taylor's play, which launches a new season for Masterpiece Theater...