But Mr. Wolf was even more protective with his dramatic secrets: the only time he turned off a reporter's tape recorder was when he revealed his play's ending.
"You'd have to say that not since F.D.R. met with Churchill off Newfoundland, in World War II, has a president made such a dramatic and secret visit," he said.
The dramatic tension of "Secret Love" centers on whether the two sets of lovers can surmount the barriers of race, bigotry and their pasts.
So the plot begins to spool out enjoyably: Marianne and Willoughby, Elinor and Edward, Lucy Steele's secret, dramatic falls, deadly chills, ballroom faints and cancelled picnics.
A market scene, in which five women sing and hawk their wares, loses its dramatic emphasis — the secret vibrancy and collusion that underpin these women's lives — through its predictably even alternation of song and market solicitations.
And every December, I also revisit Eyes Wide Shut, where the dramatic climax involves secret society's orgy.
Still, if only a few of the swing states identified in the report require disclosure, it could illuminate the sources behind the dramatic surge in secret spending, which amounted to more than $300 million in 2012.
Perhaps I've read too many PD James novels, but when I follow a group of people to an atmospheric place, I guess I expect a murder to happen, or at least something dramatic like terrible secrets being revealed.
The first dramatic scenes show a secret interrogation room in which a captive is subjected to torture by American agents.
But this dramatic insight — conversation as secret competition — is absent from the film version of Joe Cinque's Consolation.
