Word: thud
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...people who have every reason to be happy is always fascinating, and the story of former Miss America Bess Myerson is riveting. Quiz-show star, New York City's Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, walker of Mayor Ed Koch, candidate for U.S. Senate, she fell from grace with a thud. Although the ending of the Bess Mess is known -- she was acquitted of bribery charges stemming from her affair with a married man -- it is a tribute to Shana Alexander's storytelling that the reader believes at points along the way that Myerson and those around her could be spared...
...years old and until that fateful night had enjoyed a stranglehold on his opposition. Soft-drink manufacturers coveted his endorsement and no right-minded sports fan would dare forecast an end to his reign. But after 10 rounds of padded combat, the Popeye of pop culture had fallen. The thud was heard round the world, or at least in that not-insignificant fraction which has heard of Mike Tyson...
Hoffman carefully modulates his five scenes, using familiar but effective gestures: the shy grin, the hunch of the shoulders, the sudden stare, the deliberate monotonous thud to denote anger. His performance, anything but a star turn, is intelligent, confident and touching. Hoffman brings to mind his ingratiating Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman or, even more strongly, his film work in Straw Dogs as a quiet man driven beyond endurance into mayhem. The show never stints on the virulent anti-Semitism of Shakespeare's world, although Hall employs subtle staging and lighting cues to mollify modern spectators' disquiet...
...seasons, to which each human, unfortunately, has only a short-term invitation. "Church Going" deals with a man-made structure. A wayward cyclist stops out of curiosity and enters an empty house of worship: "Once I am sure there's nothing going on/ I step inside, letting the door thud shut." That offhand "nothing going on" builds slowly to signify a loss of faith, of ritual and communal practices. There are no tears, but neither is there comfort; we are, for better and worse...
...suppurating surface, this writer, Philip Marlow, is as racked and brilliant as the man who created him. Marlow, who relishes the cheap irony that his name echoes that of Raymond Chandler's famed sleuth, is a failed novelist hitting 50 with a terrifying thud. His career has been sidetracked by illness and bile. His marriage to an actress (Janet Suzman) is just an awful memory. He lies in a London hospital with psoriatic arthritis, a crippling condition of the skin and bones. The pain and the pain-killers force Marlow's mind down strange old country lanes and treacherous culs...