stiff upper lips
source: nightingale, benedict. “upper lips stiff and wooden. ” the times, london (8 march 1995): 28 .
rattigan' s last play is enjoying an emotional revival—with a 1990s slant on the british stiff upper lip .
movies: the misadventures of peter ustinov: his latest film,' stiff upper lips,' lets him poke fun at the staid english stereotype that so many people wrongly think he embodies .
movies: the misadventures of peter ustinov: his latest film,' stiff upper lips,' lets him poke fun at the staid english stereotype that so many people wrongly think he embodies. - latimes
all the sinclairs are rich, athletic and beautiful. they have servants, money and stiff upper lips. they go to the right schools, play excellent tennis and are as brittle as porcelain, ready to shatter into a million pieces under the strain of rivalry, silence and greed .
stiff upper lips takes a great idea - make a spoof of english costume dramas like room with a view - and ruins it by adding a steady stream of strong but stupid sexual innuendoes and puns, plus some blasphemy. cedric and edward, two upper - class twits from cambridge with latent homosexual desires, try to prevent edward' s sister, emily, from marrying a lower - class man who' s gotten emily pregnant .
reminiscent of mel brooks' recent offerings. stiff upper lips trades in lame comedy by recognition; while the extended sideswipes are aimed at merchant ivory, sinyor specifically targets chariots of fire, ghandi, brideshead revisited and, bizarrely, visconti' s death in venice, yet does little to imbue the parodies with real wit and invention .
when the plane is damaged and they have to bail out behind enemy lines, we see more of the real characters behind their stiff upper lips. pursued by soldiers and dogs, they make their escape by leaping on board a train. unfortunately, it’s reserved for gravely wounded ss men on their way home from the eastern front .
stiff uppe ...
this video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by gary sinyor .
without giving too much away, i can say that doom threatens as the play winds down. but just when all seems hopeless, these plucky british journalists decide to drop their stiff upper lips and fatalism about their futures and take things into their own hands. it’s enough to make a gloom - marinated journalist of today get all misty - eyed .
the time for puncturing that nostalgic dream world has long been overdue. and now, better late than never, comes'' stiff upper lips,'' a movie that sends up the merchant - ivory ethos in much the same spirit that'' airplane'' and'' the naked gun'' series have spoofed hollywood genres. if only it were funnier .
cliches can attach themselves like the proverbial burrs to a playwright whose work dips out of fashion, and sometimes they continue to cling to him even when his work is climbing back into popularity. terence rattigan' s reputation is still firmly linked to the idea of the stiff upper lip, where tongue - tied upper - middle - class characters find themselves unable to express what grieves them to similarly tongue - tied upper - middle - class characters. there is the element of truth in ...
so
stiff upper lips'
uncle horace, replete with deep - seated class prejudices and randy desires, provided a welcome change of pace for the actor. it was also a chance to counter the merchant ivory image of staid olde england - - and have a few good laughs along the way. he believes that the victorians constructed a kind of reformed, false englishman. the film opened in los angeles on friday .
london — having stacked up more than five decades of distinguished credits on stage and screen, peter ustinov certainly qualifies as an elder statesman among british actors. yet his latest film role, that of an eccentric tea plantation owner during the british raj in india in
stiff upper lips ,
intrigued him exactly because, he says ,
i' ve never played that kind of character before. i' ve never played an englishman .
and so you would be forgiven for thinking that the stiff upper lip – the complete refusal of lachrymosity, no matter what disaster befalls us – has been paralysing the faces of britishers since stonehenge was raised on salisbury plain. but, as thomas dixon shows in his erudite and entertaining book
but there’s no solution to the human puzzle – thank goodness. in 1950, mass observation sent out 300 questionnaires to its correspondents, asking whether they ever wept in the cinema. many did and a great deal of the weeping went on at screenings of david lean’s 1945 stiff - upper - lip classic
new year’s eve 1899 saw reid leave the theatre early, upset at the inclusion in the programme of one of mary kelly' s favourite songs. as the camera faded to black he was seated alone, poring over old ripper files. it was a beautifully melancholy conclusion, a slow comedown after five seasons of pulpy escapism and top - rank derring do. a show that celebrated stiff upper lips and manly adventure had come perilously close to bringing a tear to the eye .
when they are matter - of - factly cruel to
hot lips
hoolihan, we cannot quite separate that from the matter - of - fact way they' ve got to put wounded bodies back together again .
hot lips ,
who is all army professionalism and objectivity, is less human because the suffering doesn' t reach her .
'' stiff upper lips,'' which is set in 1908, is divided into chapters, each introduced by ridiculously ornate titles. the opening scenes find the major characters gathered at ivory hall, an english manor presided over by the stuffy aunt agnes (prunella scales vaguely mimicking joan plowright), who is desperately conniving to marry off her attractive niece emily (georgina cates). leading the list of candidates is cedric (robert portal), the pompous bosom buddy of emily' s dimwitted brother edward (samuel west) .
gary sinyor, director and co - writer of
lips ,
parodies those stuffy british period pieces that have gained favor with american audiences. having been weaned on the british fare of masterpiece theatre or films such as
a room with a view ,
passage to india
and
howard' s end ,
american audiences may be surprised by the playfulness of' lips.'
theoretically, a merchant - ivory sendup should be a piece of cake. but as'' stiff upper lips'' stumbles along, its humor is so scattershot, its tone so wobbly and its casting so uneven that the movie never coheres. far too often it takes the low road with bathroom humor that reminds you that yes, these genteel english sylphs had lusts and bodily functions, too. a typical joke has the disgruntled but oh - so - proper chief steward (named hudson, of course) of a fancy estate surreptitiously urinating in the soup .
if'' stiff under lips,'' directed by gary sinyor, wanted to be a lowdown farce, it should have gone much further. but perhaps the only way a merchant - ivory spoof could have worked would have been to take this high - toned genre on its own terms, exaggerate its idiosyncrasies, puff up its ralph lauren imagery of ultimate good breeding and be the snootiest movie ever made .
one of the most welcome theatrical trends of recent years has been the rediscovery of terence rattigan. outstanding productions of the browning version and the deep blue sea have revealed this once derided dramatist to be a writer of exceptional insight and sympathy, a poet of the british stiff upper lip. in praise of love features many of his humane strengths without achieving the overwhelming depth of emotion of his greatest ...
stiff upper lips takes a great idea – make a spoof of english costume dramas like room with a view – and ruins it by adding a steady stream of strong but stupid sexual innuendoes and puns, plus some blasphemy. cedric and edward are two rich classmates from cambridge who have “feelings” for one another. edward introduces cedric to his 22 - year - old sister, emily, but emily falls in love with george, a lower - class hunter whom the family matriarch, aunt agnes, hires as a servant for a trip to italy and india. cedric and edward, jealous of george, commit arson and falsely accuse george, who escapes from prison in order to stop emily’s impending marriage to cedric .
this is a book that surprises and delights. i won’t give away its biggest surprise, which is the origin of the phrase “stiff upper lip”. dixon notes that, particularly after the first world war, women never did well with their weeping. they were urged not to cry (“modern girls don’t cry, even if they feel like it, ” said the actress dorothy brunton) – but if they didn’t, they might be judged “hard - faced hussies” .
in one of his last plays terence rattigan wrote: “do you know what le vice anglais really is? not flagellation, not pederasty. it' s our refusal to admit to our emotions. ” but this english reserve, the determination to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of an unbearable depth of feeling, is what makes his masterpiece, the deep blue sea (1952), such an overwhelming dramatic experience. it is a play ...
ever since the much - loved television series'' upstairs downstairs'' enticed an american mass audience to inhabit vicariously the decorous upper - class world of edwardian england, millions have embraced the dubious pleasures of couch - potato snobbery .
once again we have this fantasy that tv stations can simply pull up their socks adjust their stiff upper lips and produce a string of hit shows that will ensure they never again have anything less than 6m viewers for any primetime show. it' s not a question of what they' ought' to be comfortable with. it' s an entirely pragmatic issue; what can they live with? you cannot force people to watch television at all let alone your own particular brand of television. for itv it' s a failure if, and only if, it costs more to put on than it returns in advertising income and sales. for bbc it' s a matter of critical reception. 2m overnights are not automatically flops much as most contributors to this thread seem to be incapable of understanding that .
this irresistibly sexy comedy tells the outrageous story of a beautiful girl and her unlikely romantic awakening! pretty young emily has just reached the ripe old marrying age of 22, and her obnoxious family have already matched her with an upper - crust stiff. emily, of course, feels nothing... until she happens upon a strapping young peasant who unleashes all kinds of strange new feelings within her body! as this funny, clever and endlessly entertaining motion picture unfolds, a comedy of events are set into motion that force everyone to deal with some decidedly lusty new emotions !
those qualities, as well as a chilly, dark - hued look that cinematographer pierre milon gets just right, go a long way toward making up for the film’s shortcomings—which include an overly familiar foreboding piano score and an uneven script. while the confinement scenes are effectively succinct and harsh, with belvaux making purposeful use of close - ups to show an increasingly haggard attal, the lengthier paris - set sections are not as assured. belvaux shoots graff’s family members in medium and long shots, nearly dwarfing them amid the dauntingly high ceilings and ornate furnishings of their spacious, sumptuous home; he’s illustrating their isolation—the fact that money can’t buy happiness—but it’s an obvious point, and one the filmmaker belabors through the distractingly stilted way these characters talk to one another. the fine french actress anne consigny overdoes the uptight wealthy wife bit, and she and her daughters suffer with such stiff upper lips that it’s a relief to see françoise fabian telling people off and cracking withering jokes as graff’s knowing mother .
the way they do that, in
mash ,
is to be almost metaphysically cruel. there is something about war that inspires practical jokes and the heroes (donald sutherland, elliott gould, and cronies) are inspired and utterly heartless. they sneak a microphone under the bed of major
hot lips
hoolihan, and broadcast her lovemaking to the entire camp. they drug a general and photograph him in a brothel .
an edwardian upper - class twit plots to marry off his sister to his equally dim friend, but she is far more interested in the family' s working - class gamekeeper. the siblings' eccentric aunt tries to resolve the crisis by leading the whole family on a tour of italy and india in the misguided hope that romance will blossom. comedy, starring peter ustinov, prunella scales, sean pertwee, georgina cates and samuel west .
georgina eventually gets her awakening from george in a silly chasing - each - other - through - the - groves sequence. but because of their class difference, she decides that marriage is out of the question. meanwhile, cedric and edward admit they have'' strange feelings'' for each other. remaining true to their repressed upper - class backgrounds, however, it takes the rest of the movie for them to recognize exactly what those feelings are .
young upper - class fellow edward arrives with his friend cedric at the family manse, ivory hall. he plans to pair off cedric with his sister emily. emily, on the other hand, falls in love with a son of local peasant, george. old aunt agnes sends all the bunch off, first to italy and then to india, so emily would forget george, who is an undesirable partner for her because of class differences, and choose cedric .
this basic plot synopsis sounds innocent enough, but the filmmakers load this scenario with a constant barrage of obscene sex jokes about oral sex, sexual arousal, homosexuality, masturbation, and other lewd matters. one of the sex scenes indulges in outright blasphemy. finally, instead of just attacking the upper - class, imperialistic excesses of victorian and edwardian england, the movie has a politically correct subtext that attacks the very premises of traditional western civilization, which were founded, for the most part, on the gospel of jesus christ and his moral teachings .
but the performances infuse the mechanics with a lively freshness. mr. windsor - cunningham, the only british actor in the cast, delivers a lovable turn as the avuncular geoffrey, who is the first to lament quietly the end of the party when lesley’s strictures dampen the formerly woolly atmosphere in the room. mr. connell oozes self - mocking charm as the slumming upper - cruster, while mr. bellamy exudes a funny torpor as the nearly sleepwalking arnold. ms. reed is adorably hassled and generous - hearted as lucy, around whom the circus spins until lesley puts an end to the merry chaos .
i think perhaps that' s what the movie is about. gould and sutherland and the members of their merry band of pranksters are offended because the army regulars don' t feel deeply enough .
hot lips
is concerned with protocol, but not with war. and so the surgeons, dancing on the brink of crack - ups, dedicate themselves to making her feel something. her façade offends them; no one could be unaffected by the work of this hospital, but she is. and so if they can crack her defenses and reduce her to their own level of dedicated cynicism, the number of suffering human beings in the camp will go up by one. and even if they fail, they can have a hell of a lot of fun trying. also, of course, it' s a distraction .
emily is now 22 and ripe for marriage. her idiotic brother edward decides, in cahoots with aunt agnes, to pair her off with his upper - class twit friend cedric trilling. emily has already had and refused a proposal of marriage from the local vicar mr. tweeb on the eminently sensible grounds that his eyebrows were too bushy! an accident at the family lake brings emily very closely into contact with the naked, handsome, muscular, lower - class peasant george and she is instantly attracted to his ripping unmentionables! seeing the undesirability of the match aunt agnes takes the family first to italy and then to india to try to separate the lusty, ill - matched couple but george accompanies them as a servant. will lust prevail or will emily be forced into a loveless marriage with the extremely dull and boring cedric ?
pagan worldview with pro - homosexual theme & jokes, preoccupation with (& validation of) sexual immorality that includes blasphemy & a politically correct statement about
progress
in sexual relationships; 15 mostly mild obscenities & 11 mostly mild but blasphemous profanities plus butler urinates in family' s food & many strong sexual innuendoes, puns & references; mild violence such as men fight in bar, man escapes from prison & father headbutts adult son & ties him up; implied fornication & depicted sexual foreplay, plus many strong sexual innuendoes, puns & references about oral sex, sexual arousal, homosexuality, masturbation, & other lewd matters; rear male nudity in natural context, upper male nudity in sexual context, women in underwear, & statue & drawing of male private parts; alcohol use; smoking; and, bearing false witness (eventually confessed), false imprisonment, jokes about racism, & joke about anti - semitism .
rattigan was born june 10, 1911, in london to an upper - class family. his father, frank, was a diplomat, serving as acting high commissioner in turkey and british minister in rumania. rattigan was educated at sandroyd school and at the harrow school. as a youngster, he became enamored with the stage and resolved to become a playwright. he was influenced by the work of anton chekhov, bernard shaw, and john galsworthy. in 1930 he attended oxford' s trinity college as a history scholar, earning his b. a. in 1933. he began to write plays, and his first work, first episode, was produced in london in 1933. the play had brief and poorly received runs in london and new york city. a few years later, french without tears (1936) became a smash hit in london and cemented rattigan' s reputation as a successful playwright. he served in the coastal command of the royal air force during world war ii, yet continued to write plays. in 1948 he was awarded a new york drama critics circle award, and the title of commander of the british empire in 1958. in his later years, rattigan adapted many of his plays to the screen and wrote several radio and television scripts. he was knighted in 1971. he died november 30, 1977, in hamilton, bermuda .
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urltoken
long ago he played the prince of wales in
beau brummell
( 1954), but in reviewing his long filmography, this man we think of as british an actor as alec guinness or laurence olivier has surprisingly played mostly non - british parts - - the roman nero in
quo vadis? ,
the belgian hercule poirot in
death on the nile
and other poirot features, plus a slew of films in which he was called upon to be italian, french, bavarian or something closer to his own ethnic background, slavic .
at 78, he' s mentally spry but physically more fragile than he used to be. carefully easing himself into an armchair in his suite at the berkeley, a discreetly classic london hotel, he politely answers questions about his long, accomplished life. he and his wife have just returned from a very british pastime, the finals at wimbledon, but they are soon to leave for the place they call home, the countryside outside geneva .
it is suggested that with his shock of white hair he looks more english now than before .
everyone at my age can look english ,
ustinov ripostes in his well - spoken voice full of well - spoken words .
the british originally were impulsive, romantic and disreputable ,
he says, words that could describe uncle horace .
the industrial revolution and queen victoria' s personal attitude toward the things she found not amusing perverted the whole sense of what england was. i think england is much closer to shakespeare than walter scott .
the film is set in 1908 when the
veddy
proper aunt agnes (prunella scales) wants desperately to marry off her niece emily (georgina cates). the likeliest prospect is cedric trilling (robert portal), a cambridge classmate of her nephew edward (and emily' s brother) - - thus, the right age, the right class, the right deportment. what does it matter that he is a pompous bore endlessly quoting homer (
as the poet homer says,' the rosy - fingered dawn... .'
)? and what does it matter that emily hates him, instead loving george, the working - class bloke ?
to spark some romance, aunt agnes takes them first to italy, then to india to visit cedric' s great - uncle horace (ustinov). though in a supporting role, ustinov plays horace to the hilt; he' s the quintessential british expat, a crotchety empire functionary bullying his indian servants and blindingly ignorant of indigenous culture .
so great is ustinov' s gift for gab that sinyor let him improvise during shooting .
when i first met him, he kept me entertained for two hours, just talking and talking ,
sinyor recalls .
the man has a brain the size of mars! so in one scene where he' s telling george how to behave like an indian servant, i just wrote,' horace continues to ramble.'
ustinov also made up a scene, one of the funniest in the film, in which he teaches george to roll his head and sing - song ,
if it be pleasing to you, i am bringing you a gin and tonic... .
it' s easy to see how sinyor was captivated. ustinov is a born raconteur. every question sends him off on an anecdote or a recollection. in a split second he changes his voice to imitate a jowly american politician or an indignant english lady. he plays for laughs, but he insists that his purposes are fundamentally serious .
born and raised in london, ustinov was trained to be a british gentleman, in the victorian sense. to escape his russian background, his father tried to adopt a tone more british than the british and put his son in westminster, one of the exclusive private schools where boys were expected to wear top hats and tail coats .
young peter grew up with a gift for mimicry, precociously copying his parent' s friends in speech and manner .
i think it happened largely because i' m an only child ,
he observes ,
and only children have to learn to amuse themselves as much as possible .
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helen maria williams observed the french revolution at first hand. a poet, essayist and novelist known for her support of radical causes, she entertained the likes of thomas paine and mary wollstonecraft in her salons. among the things she perceived, in her accounts of political turmoil across the english channel, were differences in national character when it came to expressing emotion .
“you will see frenchmen bathed in tears at a tragedy, ” she wrote in 1792. “an englishman has quite as much sensibility to a generous or tender sentiment; but he thinks it would be unmanly to weep; and, though half choaked with emotion, he scorns to be overcome, contrives to gain the victory over his feelings, and throws into his countenance as much apathy as he can well wish. ”
, you would be wrong. once upon a time and not so very long ago, this nation was given to paroxysms of sobbing at almost any opportunity. dixon, a historian of emotions, philosophy, science and religion (phew !) at queen mary, university of london, asks what dried our tears and wonders whether the death of diana, princess of wales, in 1997 unlocked the floodgates again .
, offer a reminder that “emotion” is a pretty novel idea. for centuries, the theory of bodily “humours” – blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile – held sway; personality was determined by the balance of these. robert burton, in
, understood tears as part of this balance. “to these humours, ” he wrote in 1621, “you may add serum, which is the matter of urine, and those excrementitious humours of the third concoction, sweat and tears. ” (dixon opines that his favourite phrase for tears is “excrementitious humours of the third concoction” and it is hard to disagree. )
emotion only appeared on the scene in the 19th century. smith credits the scottish philosopher thomas brown for introducing the term, which blended physiognomy with feeling: “the coinage indicated a novel approach to the life of feelings, one which used experiments and anatomical investigations to focus on observable phenomena: clenched teeth; rolling tears; shudders; wide eyes. ”
that afflicted devout christians in the early centuries of the religion and then vanished nearly without trace .
both of these books demonstrate the way in which emotions are social constructs, arising not only from our physical selves but also from culture and chronology. dixon moves from the middle ages to the present day in charting the shifting meanings of tears and british attitudes towards them; i write “british” advisedly, for there are plenty of examples in which the nations that make up this sceptred isle disagree on the matter. the
, observing david lloyd george speak in 1909 to his constituency of carnarvon boroughs – a meeting at which both the then chancellor of the exchequer and his audience wept – despaired of this “display of fulsome feeling” as revealing of a “flowery and fervid national character”. in “hard - headed and self - possessed yorkshire, such an exhibition would have been enough to empty the hall”. the
dixon’s examples are largely english. he begins with margery kempe, the 15th - century mystic whose autobiography of her spiritual journey was rediscovered in the 1930s. dixon calls her “the
dixon traces a line through the reformation, the french revolution and the building of the british empire to show how the nation gradually renounced its tears but, for much of the intervening centuries, the british and even the english were happy to keep their feelings to the fore. queen victoria wept when she learned that she was to be queen. charles dickens was a master of pathos; at the death of little nell in
, “the world mourned”, one of the author’s obituaries noted. as for oscar wilde’s reported acerbic quip – that one would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little nell without laughing – dixon does well to remind us that wilde was the author of “the happy prince”, one of the greatest sob - fests ever set down on paper .
, last summer’s hit pixar film, in which five emotions – joy, sadness, fear, anger and disgust – belonging to a little girl called riley battle it out for control of her personality. how fortunate that the animators didn’t get hold of smith’s book; the movie would have been a mess .
is published in association with the wellcome collection, an organisation that is always trying to bridge the gap between science and art. the result is a kind of very high - class book to keep on a shelf in the lav .
smith’s most entertaining entries are – somewhat by default – those that concern those unfamiliar, culturally specific emotions .
, since you were wondering, is the need to be coddled and comforted by a loved one .
is a melancholic yearning for someone or some place far distant or lost – it was thought to have been named in the 13th century and popularised during the portuguese age of discovery. some of smith’s choices are hard to quantify as ­emotions, however: does emily dickinson’s “formal feeling” really qualify? “postal, going”? i’m not so sure .
“i try so hard not to cry, ” one respondent wrote. “i’m furious with myself for crying and yet the tears do come. ”
the book of human emotions: an encyclopaedia of feeling from anger to wanderlust by tiffany watt smith is published by profile books (208pp, £14. 99 )
erica wagner is a new statesman contributing writer. a former literary editor of the times, she has twice judged the man booker prize. her books include ariel' s gift: ted hughes, sylvia plath and the story of “birthday letters”, the novel seizure and, most recently, chief engineer: the man who built the brooklyn bridge .
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for those who became addicted to that series,'' brideshead revisited'' and a subsequent stream of merchant - ivory films delivered enough seductive fixes of anglophilia to instill a mass fantasy in the american imagination of english aristocrats as the ne plus ultra of western high society .
absurdly stuffy and pretentious, cedric, when talking about the weather, likes to quote homer, describing the'' rosy - fingered dawn,'' and often converses in latin. emily, of course, can' t stand him. her mr. right appears in the person of george (sean pertwee), a working - class bloke who saves her from drowning one afternoon and during the rescue gives her her first tantalizing glimpse of the male anatomy. when aunt agnes goes searching for george in a local pub called scum of the earth, she brings along a nude drawing of george that emily has sketched from memory .
everybody soon repairs to italy (george is dragged along as a servant), where emily and cedric have their moment of truth. stealing into cedric' s bedroom one night, emily demands,'' i want my sexual awakening, and i want it now.'' when cedric proves unresponsive, she bombards him with a list of erotically provocative words of which only one,'' eton,'' seems to have an effect .
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the farther the film moves from england, the more ramshackle it becomes, and once the travelers reach india, it pretty much falls apart. the farcical jokes lampooning british imperialism are too obvious and sloppily executed to be funny. peter ustinov is wasted in the laugh - free role of cedric' s uncle horace, their eccentric indian host, who develops an improbable passion for dear aunt agnes .
directed by gary sinyor; written by paul simpkin and mr. sinyor; director of photography, simon archer; edited by peter hollywood; music by david a. hughes and john murphy; production designer, mike grant; produced by jeremy bolt and mr. sinyor; released by cowboy booking international. running time: 85 minutes. this film is not rated .
with: samuel west (edward), robert portal (cedric), prunella scales (aunt agnes), georgina cates (emily), sean pertwee (george) and peter ustinov (horace) .
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( yes, you did read that write folks) will stay with me for a long time. it was one of those beautiful days that you simply just didn’t want to end, and to top it all off, thatchers gold on friggin tap all night... .. amazing! we love you guys, huge congratulations to the both of you. lee & danny xx
last night was a belter! what a lovely couple we had the great pleasure to play for and a lovely choice of venue too. the temperature was soaring on that dance - floor, hats off to your friends and family. congratulations jess and george! x
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aunt agnes vainly tries to force emily to marry boring cedric by taking them to italy and india hoping that emily will forget about the handsome george .
what must have seemed a great idea in the pub, sending up all those worthy but dull british costume dramas in the style of airplane! lacks the verve and inspired lunacy of the zuckers at their best, but at least displays a keen eye for the genre it is satirising .
set at the height of the british empire, gary (leon the pig farmer) sinyor' s film has matriarch aunt agnes (scales) inviting stuffy toff cedric trilling (robert portal) to ivory hall, viewing him as a potential suitor for her virginal niece emily (cates). yet, during a skinnydip, emily is rescued from drowning by hunky pleb george (pertwee) who is subsequently hired as butler for the family' s expedition; first to italy, then to india where, enjoying the hospitality of a randy plantation owner (ustinov), george is framed and put on trial for setting fire to the family' s pride and joy; the lawn he has slavishly carried from england .
indeed, the film often falls wearily back on puerile britcom staples to up a flagging chuckle ante. still, the milieu is evocatively recreated, a strong cast works hard to enliven the proceedings and, as is often the case with such spoofathons, some of the smaller throwaway gags prove much funnier than the overblown set pieces (i. e. corset tightening via a galloping horse). however, you can' t escape the feeling it' s all been done before, but much better and shorter .
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journalists feeling beleaguered — that is to say, journalists — might find a wry glimmer of hope in the michael frayn play “alphabetical order, ” which is having its new york premiere courtesy of the keen company. the play, which opened on tuesday night at the harold clurman theater on theater row, depicts the frantic antics at a withering daily newspaper in the british provinces .
no, withering is not a cheering adjective to apply to a newspaper. (or a fresh one, for that matter .) but this modest, tidy comedy dates from 1975. if newspapers have been shriveling since the distant predisco days, perhaps they can look forward to a twilight as long as that of the theater itself, which was declared to be dying long before the internet was a twinkle in anybody’s eye .
“alphabetical order” is a minor early work from mr. frayn, the english writer who would go on to dazzle and delight with his peerless backstage farce “noises off” and more lately his brow - furrowing “copenhagen” and “democracy. ” but the play proves a zippy little vehicle for a delightful cast under the fine direction of the keen leader, carl forsman. nobody’s a name, and everybody’s terrific, a heartening reminder of the city’s deep, too often underused field of fine character actors. that they all manage to field creditable british accents is icing on the tea cake .
mr. frayn’s play seems deliberately modest, even as a comedy about journalists. instead of being set in the nerve center of the newsroom, where editors bark and belt back whiskey, and reporters crack wise and fight over scoops, “alphabetical order” takes place entirely in the pokey library of the paper in question .
a newspaper’s library, for those not conversant with the antediluvian ways of pre - web journalism, is where research materials were stored, and articles from the major papers were carefully clipped and sorted by subject, then filed neatly away in metal cabinets, to be dug up — by hand, imagine — when reporters were looking for background on a piece .
the cast of “alphabetical order, ” from left: william connell, paul molnar, john windsor - cunningham, brad bellamy and margaret daly; center, angela reed; and right, audrey lynn weston, in the keen company production of michael frayn' s 1975 newspaper comedy at the harold clurman theater .
as the play opens, chaos reigns in the dingy domain of the paper’s librarian, lucy (angela reed), who has hired a new assistant, lesley (audrey lynn weston), to help her restore some order to the dangerously engorged cabinets and vagrant piles of yellowing newsprint. ms. weston’s prim gait and gape of astonishment signal effectively how appalled lesley is at lucy’s carefree attitude toward both her job and her life .
this allergy to disorder will soon find lesley taming both the chaos in the room and the unruly romances of those who pass through it. these include the affable, cambridge - educated reporter john (william connell), who has been conducting an on - again, off - again affair with lucy; the bewhiskered wally (paul molnar), another reporter and john’s rival for lucy’s distracted favors; arnold (brad bellamy), who communicates in monosyllables and has both a dying wife and a drinking problem; the cockney messenger geoffrey (john windsor - cunningham), who’s got a wink and a friendly joke for everybody; and the features editor, nora (margaret daly), who has a tender eye for arnold .
mr. frayn, who began his career as a journalist, portrays the roistering atmosphere in the room with obvious affection, although “alphabetical order” reveals a playwright still coloring inside the lines. the plot is mathematically tidy, with each strand almost too carefully drawn. the jokes occasionally fall dead on the air, leaving little puffs of dust behind. (with its groovy, well - observed 1970s costumes, by jennifer paar, the play sometimes reminded me of the endearing london department store sitcom of the era, “are you being served? ” )
by michael frayn; directed by carl forsman; stage manager, justin scribner; sets by nathan heverin; costumes by jennifer paar; lighting by josh bradford; sound by jill b. c. duboff; technical director, marshall miller. presented by the keen company, mr. forsman, artistic director; wayne kelton, executive director. at the harold clurman theater, 412 west 42nd street, clinton; (212) 239 - 6200, urltoken. through oct. 26. running time: 1 hour 45 minutes .
with: audrey lynn weston (lesley), john windsor - cunningham (geoffrey), brad bellamy (arnold), william connell (john), angela reed (lucy), margaret daly (nora) and paul molnar (wally) .
with the headline: the withering heights and depths of a dying british paper .
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a patrician new england clan decamps to their private island off martha’s vineyard for the summer. of the dozen or so sinclair family members in residence, “no one is a criminal. no one is an addict. no one is a failure. ” three lies, the first of many, provide an irresistible premise for this ticking bomb of a novel by e. lockhart .
overtones of the brothers grimm and “king lear” abound in this quasi - fable about the powerful patriarch and his three beautiful, useless daughters, all of whom drink too much and feud over who will get the biggest slice of the family fortune. meanwhile the next generation — lear’s grandchildren, as it were — raises the moral ante by falling inappropriately in love, fomenting revolution and refusing to participate in the traditional sinclair game of vying for granddad’s money .
the liars of the title are three teenage cousins — johnny, mirren and our narrator, cadence — together with an outsider by the name of gat patil. gat is handsome, dark - skinned and charismatic, with passionately held political beliefs such as: “not everyone has private islands. some people work on them. some work in factories. some don’t have work. some don’t have food. ” cadence’s grandfather cannot even bring himself to address the interloper by name, but for cadence it is love at first sight .
while the sinclair mothers bicker over tablecloths, earrings and trust funds, the liars dream of college and freedom and true love. lockhart admirably captures the erotic intensity of shadowy summer nights when the grown - ups either are drunk or elsewhere, or both, leaving the liars — tanned and barefoot and desperate for intimacy — to kiss and shiver and swear eternal allegiance on the beach .
years pass; the troubles in paradise intensify. money is tight. drinkers become drunks. sexual jealousies surface. and then, during the summer of her 15th year, cadence suffers a catastrophic accident that leaves her with crippling migraines and total amnesia. but what actually happened? was it really just an accident ?
amnesia is not an easy literary row to hoe. beloved by cheap tv drama, it’s a device certain to cue groans and eye - rolls from jaded readers. yet lockhart just about manages to pull it off, thanks to the freshness of the writing and the razor - sharp metaphor amnesia provides for the sinclair family habit of denial .
cadence returns to the island after two years to try to reconstruct what happened on the night of the accident. for reasons that frustrate her (and the reader), but which will eventually be explained, not a single witness will talk. the story jumps back and forth in time, interspersing her edgy, idiomatic narrative with a series of powerful twisted fairy tales. slowly, painstakingly, cadence pieces together the events of that terrible night. despite a final chapter that hints at redemption, it is not the sort of disaster from which she will ever recover .
i enjoyed lockhart’s pithy observations, the intimate shorthand, the snappy characterizations of wasp families. they populated my youth on martha’s vineyard and at harvard, flawlessly confident, angst - free and clean in their izod shirts and lily pulitzer dresses, inspiring curiosity and wonder in generations of messy, overemotional jews. who are they? what are they really like ?
the flaw in “we were liars” is that we never find out. cadence’s story emerges from deep within this troubled family — and yet the aunts, teenagers, littles and golden retrievers form a largely undifferentiated mass. careless, grasping and obsessed with keeping up appearances, they casually wreck one another’s lives, but we never discover why. even the liars are a featureless bunch. cadence repeatedly announces that johnny is “bounce, effort and snark, ” that mirren is “sugar, curiosity and rain, ” that gat is “contemplation and enthusiasm. ambition and strong coffee. ” these are nice descriptions, but some genuine characterization wouldn’t go amiss. their fates seem as distant as the fates of the princesses in cadence’s fairy tales. they are there to offer a moral, not to elicit sympathy or understanding .
this is an ambitious novel with an engaging voice, a clever plot and some terrific writing. in the end, however, its portrayal of a shattered family and the desperate consequences of silence and greed, feels oddly flat. i couldn’t help thinking that the terrible fate of the sinclair family might as well be happening to a collection of fairy tale characters. or to those preppy models in the ralph lauren ads. did i care how they lived or died? probably not as much as i should have .
meg rosoff is the author of “how i live now, ” the 2005 winner of the michael l. printz award, and, most recently, of “picture me gone, ” a 2013 national book award finalist .
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he last ever episode of ripper street blended bravura action and full - steam sentimentality. a multitude of loose ends requiring tying off, the victorian thriller having woven a typically intricate web of dark deeds through
. but, as the end approached, there was also an obligation to give a respectful farewell to its beloved ensemble of coppers and crooks. this wasn' t a temporary sign - off – it was a final curtain bow .
one of our favourite characters, inspector bennet drake (jerome flynn), had already met his maker at the conclusion of series four during a run - in with a throat - ripping maniac. now he was back for a delightful encore as, in an extended flashback, di edmund reid (matthew macfadyen) reflected on his and drake’s failed investigation, a decade previously, into the (real life) murder by jack the ripper of mary kelly .
eid’s obsession with the killer from whom the series took its name was rekindled midway though the 75 - minute finale. the opening half had been spent bringing to a hasty conclusion the taciturn hero’s struggle with villainous scotland yard bigwig augustus dove (killian scott). the jig was finally up for the dastardly dove as he was found to have murdered young robin sumner. the damning evidence was riddled across his chest in the scarlet fever he had contracted from his victim .
a hasty cover - up ensued. dove was bundled off to prison under an assumed name, while his cannibal brother nathaniel (the sweeter of the pair, it turned out) was dispatched to the hangman. joining him at the gallows was former brothel keeper “long
susan hart (myanna buring), finally held to account for her crimes across previous seasons .
er husband, captain homer jackson (adam rothenberg), was permitted to return to america with their son, though this proved temporary relief as he was subsequently killed off camera in a drowning accident. with much - loved characters dropping like fruit - flies, reid' s future suddenly seemed in question too.
stiff upper lips ( 1998 ) is a broad parody of british period films , especially the lavish merchant-ivory productions of the 1980s and early 1990s . although it specifically targets a room with a view , chariots of fire , maurice , a passage to india , and many other films , in a more general way stiff upper lips satirises popular perceptions of certain edwardian traits : propriety , sexual repression , xenophobia , and class snobbery . the film was directed by gary sinyor and stars sean pertwee , georgina cates , robert portal , samuel west , prunella scales , and peter ustinov . it was filmed on location in italy , india , and on the isle of man . 
stiff upper lips (1998) is a broad parody of british period films, especially the lavish merchant-ivory productions of the 1980s and early 1990s. although it specifically targets a room with a view, chariots of fire, maurice, a passage to india, and many other films, in a more general way stiff upper lips satirises popular perceptions of certain edwardian traits: propriety, sexual repression, xenophobia, and class snobbery. the film was directed by gary sinyor and stars sean pertwee, georgina cates, robert portal, samuel west, prunella scales, and peter ustinov. it was filmed on location in italy, india, and on the isle of man.
stiff upper lips (1998) is a broad parody of british period films, especially the lavish merchant-ivory productions of the 1980s and early 1990s. although it specifically targets a room with a view, chariots of fire, maurice, a passage to india, and many other films, in a more general way stiff upper lips satirises popular perceptions of certain edwardian traits: propriety, sexual repression, xenophobia, and class snobbery. the film was directed by gary sinyor and stars sean pertwee, georgina cates, robert portal, samuel west, prunella scales, and peter ustinov. it was filmed on location in italy, india, and on the isle of man.