Word: virtuoso
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INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE. John Osborne has orchestrated the plight of a man out of tune with his time, working in themes of frustration and painful self-recognition, building to a crescendo of despair. Actor Nicol Williamson is the commanding virtuoso...
...teched. One shaggy-maned candidate continually roamed the hallways, humming and conducting an imaginary orchestra with all the jabbing vigor of a shadowboxer; another, never without his trusty baton, sat in on bull sessions and conducted the rhythm of the conversation, cueing each participant as though he were a virtuoso soloist. Superstitions were rampant. One contestant, lest he be jinxed, ran off with his hands clasped over his ears each time someone tried to wish him good luck...
...actors themselves were a pretty dreary lot with the exception of that brilliant clown Paul Benedict and the more-Aryan-than-Thou Larry Bryggman. Jo Lane was tedious in the virtuoso role of "The Jewish Wife" and Ted Kazanoff inadequate as the perplexed Judge in "Quest for Justice." Granted it was opening night, I wonder if that is any excuse in a professional company for the inordinate number of missed cues, dropped lines, and fumbled props. The one bright note was the new translation by the Harvard Graduate School's own Kenneth Tigar and Clayton Koelb, which sounded superior...
Some Hollywood movies tried for foreign forms; for example, Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker, self-conscious despite Rod Steiger's virtuoso performance. Ship of Fools, by the overrated Stanley Kramer, was saved by the performances of three foreign stars, Simone Signoret, Vivien Leigh and Oskar Werner. Nothing But a Man, on the other hand, was persuasively unpretentious: it took a stronger, warmer, more objective look at contemporary Negro life in the U.S. than any other film to date...
...book is a virtuoso demonstration of the skills that helped make Schlesinger a Pulitzer prizewinner at 28 (with The Age of Jackson) and a bestselling author (with all three volumes of his still incomplete The Age of Roosevelt) who is also held in high respect by his fellow historians. Those skills include an almost unique combination of encyclopedic knowledge, sharp reporter's eye, extraordinary facility and a literary style any novelist would be proud of. Schlesinger has no use for the notion of the historian as a scientist. To Schlesinger, the historian is one who "noses around in chaos...