Word: spinsterly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...play's virtues. Christie's killer sticks closely to the execution scheme that the "Ten Little Indians" poem suggests--which he conveniently displays next to the fireplace. After each ritual murder someone is sure to pipe up, "Oh, that method fits here!" The sexually repressed spinster, the swaggering man of adventure, and the sweet-young-thing secretary are just three of the ten cliches who populate the island. And it happens, of course, on a dark and stormy night...
...admirably avoids ridiculing the sags and wrinkles that have developed over thirty years. Considerable editing and re-phrasing could give the script enough of a face lift to disguise its age. Aside from attempting that massive task, allowing Ten Little Indians the straight-faced charm of anachronism (the spinster disapproves of low-backed evening gowns) is the best...
...nurse who orders the rebel hero of the asylum lobotomized is intellectually presented as conformity's tool in crushing individualists. The emotional line of the play, however, suggests that the hero's real crime is machismo. He is, in effect, being castrated by a neurotic, sex-starved spinster in an acute fit of penis envy...
...Conformist. While society is being corrupted outside the garden, the self-contained life-style perpetuated by the Finzi-Continis on the inside is rotting at the core. Raised as a bluestocking, Micol quips to Giorgio that she's writing her thesis on Emily Dickenson, "a dried-up spinster like me." Minutes later, in giving him a mock botany lesson, she points to a tree she imagines planted by Lucrezia Borgia. The connotations of that name reveal in her no dried-up spinster, but the malevolence of cruel sexuality. All her dewyeyed clinging to a golden past is merely the weapon...
Some of the more mature passengers also managed to swing, though less overtly. A European blonde in her mid-50s cuddled quietly with five different men on the first five days at sea. A spinster from North America discreetly resumed a four-year-old liaison with a cabin boy. "He might not be an officer," explained one of her friends, "but he is an intelligent cabin boy. And very kind." A few other matrons found comfort with the gaggle of gigolos aboard. Gay liberation was also evident. Punned one ship's officer: "We are carrying both lifeboats and fairies...