Word: sordidly
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These are among the frightening and sordid circumstances of imprisonment reported by the 52 hostages in phone calls to their families during their first hours of liberty, or related by hostages who had been released months ago and at last felt free to speak. The full story of their ordeal is far from told. The first fragmentary reports indicated that the hostages were not subjected to the physical tortures that Iranians have inflicted on each other for centuries, but the Americans did suffer relentless psychological abuse and physical mistreatment that ring in American ears as a tale of horror...
Technically, the refurbished Metropolitan Center enhances the production. Unlike Broadway where the actors often got lost on the mammoth stage, this scaled-down version of Eugene Lee's foundry set hovers overhead preventing any air from invigorating the denizens of London's sordid slums. Ken Billington's lighting generally succeeds where the score fails by sharply evoking the character's moods. Piercing spotlights heighten Sweeney's agonizing inner turmoil, while a stupefying pinkish orange haze overpowers mottled ground tones to emphasize the community's moral desolation and confusion. Flashes of sunshine intrude briefly, but the furnace's Hellish red glow...
...ALMOST innocent victims in this struggle are Hurt and wife Blair Brown, who, respectively, appeared invigorated and bewildered by the sordid goings on. A veteran of B-movies that capitalized on his blond locks and blue eyes, Hurt throws himself into his role, watching with enthusiasm as he slides toward the simian. He is strangely unafraid, but Brown makes up for his lack of fear, crying almost incessantly. Charles Haid's cameo as the skeptical colleague is the best performance in the film, though he cannot rise above the chaos that constitutes the finale...
...sent shock waves through the United States and the rest of the world. Their deaths received attention because of their prominent positions in the worlds of music and medicine, but the shootings were only two of thousands that take the lives of American men and women each year. These sordid statistics underscore the need to outlaw the manufacture and use of handguns in this country...
...production also succeeds in recreating the detail of Brecht's fanciful vision of America as a Babylon on wheels. Sordid vulgarity falls from the garish costumes, the trashy props, and the giant neon arch--inscribed with the names of the seven sins lighting up in succession like a stage-wide slot machine that lands on whichever sins is being acted out below. In this world, beauty becomes a painted go-go dancer, so it's no wonder lust, pride and anger should seem more virtuous than the alternatives of self-denial, hypocrisy and quiescence...