Word: thomasina
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Counselor Thomasina Hassler says many black students' grades suffer because of family problems or responsibilities at home that distract from studies. To make her point, she brandishes a ranking of last year's 267 seniors; of the 34 who graduated with a 4.0 or better GPA, none was black. Searching the list for the highest-ranking black student, she runs her finger down the second page to No. 59, Tanya Hoard, who graduated with a 3.67 average. Hassler, who is black, wishes there were more like Hoard and thinks both black and white teachers at Webster must work harder...
...Arcadia" refers to the stately pleasure dome Sidley Park, built by a shrewd but merry widow in Derbyshire, England, in 1809. Its inhabitants include her precocious daughter, Thomasina (Gretchen Cleevely), who is busily deducing the physics of heat without the use of mathematics and to the astonishment of her dashing tutor, Septimus (Conner Trinneer), a craggy landscaper who wishes to redesign Arcadia in a more gothic style, including a hermitage and a rented hermit, and Ezra Chater (Stephen Temperley), a second-rate poet. Oh, and Lord Byron also wanders about the premises, though, sadly, off-stage...
...sympathetic figure in the play, despite his extensive philandering. Gretchen Cleevely plays the wise child with a sort of Margaret O'Brien chirpiness, which is distracting, but not excessively so; more troubling are the scenes toward the end of the play, which seem to propose the 16-year-old Thomasina as a potential sexual partner for her adult tutor. Granted, this was more appropriate in the 19th century, but Cleevely's mannerisms do not change enough in the later scenes to make her seem older than 13; as a result, these scenes leave the audience a bit itchy...
...minor characters, the problems lie mainly in the accents. Lady Croom (Linda Gehringer), Thomasina's mother, pronounces her humorous lines with an artificial shrillness, which lessened the sheer fun of watching her tyrannize the household. Captain Brice, RN (Anthony Newfield) is visually hysterical, wearing a hat the size of Derbyshire, but the play would benefit--epecially in terms of running time--if incidental characters like his were given fewer lines...
...Prissy, the comically incompetent slave in the film classic Gone With the Wind. Her panicked "Lawdy, Miz Scarlett. I don't know nothing about birthing babies!" became one of the most quoted lines in movie history--and in later years, a focus of criticism for fitting an "Uncle Thomasina" stereotype. Ironically, McQueen herself fought to humanize the role, refusing to perform even greater indignities like a watermelon-eating scene. By 1947 McQueen decided she would no longer play servants--a stand that effectively ended her movie career...