Word: plot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Final Test itself tries so hard to be Englishly subtle that it manages to be merely tedious. The plot concerns a distinguished cricketer taking his last swings in a test match against Australia. He quits because his son, an arty young man who fancies himself a lyric poet, is mortified to tell Oxford classmates that his father is "in sport." After creaking through a whole series of domestic traumas, including a rather vapid romance between the cricketer and a barmaid, the story reaches its denouement with a testimonial to sports as the great leveler...
...spies, along with a Red or ex-Red who apparently worked as a double or even triple agent. France's chief Communist hunter was accused of being a Communist himself. Supporters of Mendès-France even implied darkly that the affair was an anti-Mendès plot supported...
...journalistic litmus paper, that ex-Communists are bores. But Koestler is no bore. He transformed history into literature of such reality that it, in turn, became history. His masterpiece, Darkness at Noon, was based on the Moscow trials and told how 01d Bolshevik "Rubashov" confessed falsely to a plot against the party, because confession was "the last service" he could render the party. While Koestler was writing that novel, Walter Krivitsky, ex-head of Soviet Military Intelligence for Western Europe, was writing a factual account of how a false confession had been extracted from a real-life Old Bolshevik. Koestler...
...other outstanding performer is Michael Plisko, who overcomes, with equal skill, a problem much different from Miss Cass's. Since his is the best role the play offers, it demands a superior ability, providing most of the plot's impetus and interest. Plisko gives a thoughtful performance, creating a character whose stature merits the two hour attention of an audience. Actually, he fills a slight gap left by Thomas Whedon, who plays a Christ-like figure (not unnaturally named Chris), described as one whose mere presence fills his friends with noble sentiments. Since this is a pretty hard role...
...newest exercise, Sabrina, is nothing more than a modern comedy of manners that tries too hard to be something else. The plot mixes equal parts of a million dollars, a pair of eligible sons of the household, and a Long Island estate. The attempts at moralizing, however, settle to the bottom and give the froth an unbalanced weight...