![]() ![]() Harrower’s version and Polly Findlay’s production hover above judgment and go deep into sadness. Having been a writer, Sandy is now about to become a nun: the power of institutional life is evoked in the meshing of school and convent, with acute, suggestive Sylvestra Le Touzel as both mother superior and a headmistress who has sympathetic glimmers beneath her starch. She ends, shrunken, on a note of terrible plaintiveness.ĭavid Harrower’s version retains Spark’s diamond-edged dialogue but recasts the narrative so that it is seen retrospectively, through the eyes of Sandy, who as a girl was famous for staring. Williams has an extra electric purr to her voice, a shimmy in her movement: it is as if underneath her marvellous red dress (hip-hugging, with three buttons aslant on the shoulder) she is stepping out of a silk slip. A teacher who lifts her pupils’ expectations – and traps them in her own dreams. Now she shimmeringly incarnates this ambiguous creature: a mixture of the alluring and the ridiculous, a woman who makes her chosen girls long to get out of their gymslips and nibble biscotti while reverencing Giotto. ![]() Anyone in doubt that she is one of the strongest and most supple of actors need only glance at her range – from her impeccable Wallis Simpson in The Crown to her magnificent Clytemnestra. ![]()
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