The climactic face-off, between Alison and Gene, feels dramatically inevitable but humanly implausible.
After an uncharacteristically wan start, the mezzo-soprano Kate Aldrich rose gradually to her usual high standard as Romeo, doing the role full justice in intimate love duets and a climactic face-off with Mr. Capalbo.
Mr. Simon observes the frayed bonds of this damaged family with a light touch where appropriate but also with honesty and compassion, making the climactic face-off between Bella and her mother all the more moving.
And the climactic face-off with Hoss — a showdown of sung and spoken poetic riffs — manages to cover the history of rock 'n' roll, starting from Southern slave chants to heavy metal.
That delicate balance assumes its most wrenching form in her climactic face-off with Stanley, as Blanche tries to defy not only her predatory brother-in-law but also the drunkenness that keeps pulling her to the floor.
Here would be the climactic face-off: on one side, a young and impulsive modernizer who fancied himself leader of so-called color revolutions that would sweep away unsavory holdover regimes from the Soviet years.
A feud with a well-heeled, crosstown rival ("cake eaters," as one student memorably describes them) builds to a climactic senior year face-off.
At the same time, God's golf lessons, channeled through Johnny, help Luke regain his confidence, and in the climactic scenes he faces off with an unflappable champion, T. K. Oh (K. J. Choi) at the Texas Open.
And the climactic scene of "Faces Places" is Varda's and JR's planned visit to Godard in the Swiss town of Rolle, where he has been living for about forty years.
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Hal's decency sneaks up on him, and by the time he faces a climactic test you really do feel that he has grown.
