Word: stritch
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...nothing can compare to the theatrical feat achieved by Karen Mason. Ably filling the shoes of Elaine Stritch, the original Joanne, Mason is sultry and sardonic and performs "Ladies Who Lunch" with a touch of elegance...
...either a maddeningly elusive tale or a haunting parable of disconnection and existential terror. Gerald Gutierrez's tight, tense direction makes a good case for the latter. So do actors like Rosemary Harris and George Grizzard, who seem to have lived in their roles for years (only Elaine Stritch, as Agnes' boozy sister, betrays a bit of Broadway shtick). When Grizzard drops his air of befuddled decorum for a climactic aria of rage and resolve ("I want your plague! You've got some terror with you? Bring it in! Bring it in!!"), the heart freezes...
...carping old New England biddy Parthy, who croons it to her newborn grandchild. At a single stroke, Parthy is suddenly humanized, and we see in her the tender side that must have attracted her husband, the skipper Cap'n Andy, in the first place. As Parthy, Elaine Stritch is one of the production's great strengths. She has no voice to speak of at this stage in her career, but she can still put across a song because it comes from her heart and not merely from her lips...
...Stephen Sondheim as Broadway's premier lyricist-composer. Pennebaker fashioned the joy and angst of the 18 1/2-hr. endeavor into a thrilling mini-musical in itself. Virtually unseen for two decades, the film is now available on video (RCA Victor). High points: Dean Jones earnestly attacking Being Alive, Elaine Stritch agonizing through The Ladies Who Lunch. As a good show should, the 53-min. video leaves its audience craving more...
September, which Allen wrote and directed, is one of these sticky wickets. After a summer, six people prepare to take their leave of a country house owned by the quakingly vulnerable Lane (Mia Farrow). They include her mother (Elaine Stritch), a bruising emotional bully; her stepfather (Jack Warden), who is a noisy irrelevancy; a neighbor (Denholm Elliott) who expresses love by being socially obliging; a best friend (Dianne Wiest) who is obscurely tense; and Peter (Sam Waterston), the ad man who rented the guest cottage on the property and then failed in two obvious duties: he didn't finish...