Word: starks
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There's a lot of posturing in director Woody Hill's staging of Harold Pinter's Betrayal. Rather too much posturing, actually. Given an intriguing theme and an even more intriguing framework within which to stage the play, Hill opts for a stark presentation suffused in its own bitterness. The director seems to strike a flat emotional pitch in all the players of this production, and most emotional nuances are, as a result, lost. In Betrayal, rigid staging unfortunately replaces audience interpretation with directorial determinism...
This sort of stage artifice is Betrayal's central problem: every poignant gesture is extended beyond its natural limits, every subtle shade is obliterated by the stark interpretation. Even the harsh lighting creates a visual over-simplification on the stage. Betrayal is a first-rate script with an ingenious plot, and the acting in this production is generally admirable. But its black and white interpretation leaves us longing for a touch of gray...
...book's thesis is stark: "The manipulation of America's political and economic system by Japanese and other foreign interests has reached the point that it threatens our national sovereignty." What distinguishes Choate from other recent critics of Japan is that he is, at the core, a moralist; to him, the avidity with which former government officials are willing to work for foreign interests symbolizes the erosion of America's "civic virtue." His is a critique of the familiar, entirely legal, Washington revolving door, recast in patriotic terms...
...absence of any stark differences between the two candidates on these concerns, a ballot referendum proposed by Citizens for Limited Taxation (CLT) has emerged as the touchstone of the campaign...
...heart of J.M. Coetzee's disturbing new novel is the stark image of cancer, a malignant disease that takes little pity on its victim as it ravages and destroys. The narrator of the tale is Mrs. Curren, a white South African widow of the liberal variety who is being eaten from within by a cancer she knows will shortly end her life. Her physical pain and advanced years entitle her to live out her final days in a quiet, dignified fashion. But circumstances conspire against graceful surrender. Separated by an ocean from her only child...