Word: spinsterly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...natural beauty: Katharine Hepburn. If she looks a bit like some high-spirited English school mistress, that's because she is. On location for a television remake of Broadway's 1940 success, The Corn Is Green, Hepburn is cast as the indefatigable Miss Moffat, a sturdy spinster who moves to a Welsh mining town and opens a school. The man in the director's chair is close friend George Cukor, 79, the grand old master who guided Hepburn through nine previous films. For the crew it's an ideal summer frolic amidst flint hedges and yellow...
...Little Indians contains the basic Christie trademarks--a cast of stereotyped characters--a retired general, a spinster, a professional man, a dashing playboy--and the usual shock ending. The plot and suspense rely on interaction between the characters--their growing suspicion of one another and the inexorable stripping of civilized facades. Beneath lie passions Christie believes can drive even the most unlikely people to murder. The success of the play thus relies on good acting to dramatize the character relationships, and fast-paced direction to highlight tension...
...performances of the supporting characters, however, provide the sparkle to the show. Ed Redlich shines as the brash American detective, William Blore. Redlich exploits beautifully the gluttony, thickheadedness and grating bluntness of Blore--a hilarious character. Equally good is Louisa Jerauld as the religion-obsessed, sexually repressed spinster Miss Brent. Jerauld's quivering voice and slow, shuffling walk suggest the righteous, moralizing old maid. David Rieffel, as the gentle, retired General John MacKenzie, also portrays his character sensitively, especially in his frightening monologue to Vera...
...cast cannot redeem. Marian Seldes winces uncomfortably in her pointless role, and Richard Woods cannot enact a plodding, fatuous lawyer without giving a plodding, fatuous performance. Victor Garber coasts fairly pleasantly through his cunning young man role, and Marian Winters twinkles merrily as a psychic spinster, but we can't be allowed to laugh at her performance without another character reminding us that she is "the comedy relief...
Though Hedda always occupies the play's center, Ibsen's profound insight and tight structure integrate the other characters as complex personalities in their own right. There is Hedda's bumbling, self-important husband George Tesman; his well-meaning spinster aunt; the gifted and unbalanced Eilert Lovborg; the parasitically devoted Thea Elvsted Hedda's rival as Lovborg's muse; and the suave dissolute Judge Brack, whose cynical attempt to blackmail Hedda precipitates her defiant suicide...