Four bedraggled, mysteriously frightened characters draw together and separate in fragmented combinations to a lurching waltz, until one is cast out of their fraught world and into the audience.
Simon Keenlyside, as the Count, also declines to play the buffoon, instead using his considerable virtuosity to create a manic, almost frightening character.
Steven Moffat, the television producer who created "Sherlock" with Mark Gatiss, recognized similar qualities in Mr. Cumberbatch after seeing him play a quietly frightening character in "Atonement".
SAN FRANCISCO — There was no doubt that Phillip Garrido, a paroled sex offender, had long been known as an odd and sometimes frightening character to neighbors, business associates and even the few people who called him a friend.
It takes a lot of gumption to blow up the entire Washington area; render the wreckage in detailed yet almost painterly strokes; populate the wasteland with all manner of alternately deranged, endearing and frightening characters; weave a score of intersecting story lines; sprinkle on a thick layer of high-powered weaponry; and simply set the player loose.
Emboldened by countless viewings of Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets," which gave him the confidence to tell stories about the funny and occasionally frightening characters he'd grown up with, he soon began churning out short films at a rate of more than one a month.
Mr. Conrad observes that "food served Hitchcock as a metaphor for killing, for copulation, and for their secret similarity"; that in movies like "Notorious" and "Psycho," mothers tended to be controlling or fear-inducing figures; that in "Lifeboat," "Foreign Correspondent" and "Rear Window," among other films, light is used to torment or frighten characters.
In the book The Shooting Scripts, Russell T Davies claims that he had originally set out to write this episode from Adam's perspective, watching the adventure unfolding from his point of view (exactly as Rose did in "Rose") and seeing both the Doctor and Rose as enigmatic, frightening characters.
"It's terrific that people are being frightened by the character". First-time filmmaker David Michôd said he wrote the role of Smurf with Weaver in mind.
Accompanied by a sumptuously full orchestra, and portrayed by a cast that finds the magnetism in rage and resentment, the frightening title characters of "Assassins" are restating their demand to be noticed in this Roundabout Theater Company production.
