Word: scripted
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...well-realized element of Miller's script is a "lone cellist," here ingeniously expanded to two, probably as underapreciated as it is slightly overused. Like voices calling and responding to one another, they act, unlike much musical interscenic filler, to further contemplation with subtle gradations of emotion rather than the current fad of ironic comment or scene-labeling through dastardly clever epoch-hopping musical selection. Bach (played by Laura Lee'00) and Gounod (Luba Mandzy '01) trade strains here, at the same time softening and commenting upon the rough edges of Miller's emotional landscape...
...spotlight line such as, "You're the best show in town, Sam," might have amounted to little more than a melodramatic leer in the hands of a less talented actor; Hoffman delivers it quietly, almost swallowing the words, and the effect is chilling. To its own detriment, the script fails to learn from his example. Writers Tom Matthews and Eric Williams, journalists themselves, cannot resist hammering home their message. "I don't want to cross the line," Brackett tells his boss; Lou, at the beginning of the movie, "I just want to move the line." Cheesy, perhaps, but certainly forgivable...
...original. These additions, mostly accounts of Anne's developing sexuality and her stormy relations with her mother and sister, were edited out of the original publication of the diary by Anne's father Otto Frank, the sole survivor of the family. Since Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett's original script already portrayed Anne as a disarmingly "real" character, Kesselman's adaptation doesn't enhance the play with much new emotional depth. Yet it certainly doesn't prevent this production from being a cleanly performed and eloquently realized retelling of Anne Frank's story...
...much of the action confusing. The play's program does provide scene summaries in English, and large LED boards flanking the stage periodically show abbreviated English translations of the dialogue. Frustratingly, the boards are seldom used: most of the dialogue remains untranslated. This is a shame, as the actual script of Umabatha contains some remarkably poetic language, even after translation...
...confused attitude toward its heroine. Still, Something about Catherine, that "mediocre and defenseless creature," has always drawn the attention of some superlative artistic advocates. Like the Wyler film and the Broadway productions, this Heiress boasts an impeccable cast and a sensitive director who nearly overcome the flaws in the script with the sheer emotional power of their commitment to the work. As befits the story of a wallflower, the Lyric takes flawed material and makes of it something magnificent...