Word: room
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...December 31, 1899. "The last day of Alison's century," as one of the characters helpfully points out. The Stanhope family is leaving its old home on the banks of the Mississippi for a new one in the city. A reporter from Chicago comes down to see the room in which Alison worked, and off we go. Old Aunt Agatha, Alison's constant companion, now grown senile, tries unsuccessfully to burn down the house. Elsa Stanhope who, years before, ran off with a married man, returns to spend one final night in the house. Aunt Agatha dies in Elsa...
...surrounds the stage area, sort of in the style of a diminished Yale Bowl. Further, there are very few rows of seats, so nowhere are you more than a few feet from the actors. As the large majority of modern plays are written for the proscenium stage, or the room with three walls, as someone once called it, there are distinct problems of staging at Tufts. One of the most obvious of these is how to point your actors. On the proscenium stage there is no problem, you point them toward the audience. When the audience is on all sides...
...unwillingness to eliminate exaggerated poses and gestures, the actors were generally only slightly less than adequate. Frederick Blais as the father, and head of the Stanhope family, suffered most from this failing and played his part on too high a level from the beginning. This left him no room for growth of emotional intensity in the final scene, where he finally resorted to uncontrolled hysteria. Richard Knowles as the reporter managed by his tone and facial expressions to disguise the fact that the reporter is not a slimy busybody but a spiritual successor to Alison. Probably the best performance...
...Room at the Top (at the Kenmore). Perhaps the best British film since Guinness and Hawkins teamed up in The Prisoner, this is a deeply penetrating and significant study of English sex and society, with some of the frankest dialogue ever to come across the screen. Won award for "best performance by an actress" (Simone Signoret) at Cannes; named "best picture of the year, 1959" by the British Film Academy...
...Room at the Top. A tragicomedy of Angry Young Manners about a Julien Sorel of the welfare state. Sometimes embarrassingly close to caricature, it remains one of the best British pictures in years...