Letts, a potentially great writer, is at his most brilliant and intense when he writes small chamber pieces, in which his rough and scary metaphors are in synch with his disillusioned, mad characters.
Some of the old Naxals survive today, either in anonymity, or rehabilitated as respectable academics; but most – including, so we were often told, a number of that generation's most "brilliant students" – disappeared when that movement was brutally crushed at the end of the 1960s.
"Sharon works incredibly hard and writes some of the most brilliant, observational comedy – especially when it comes to female characters – but, for whatever reason, she doesn't have the same profile as, say, Lena Dunham and she should have.
"The most brilliant things are done when we are young", he reminded me, in his message to older executives unwilling to hand over power to their younger colleagues.
Even the most brilliant conversationalists can grow tiring when you are locked in a room with them for too long a time.
It is a bit pathetic, frankly, when the most brilliant designers and most beautiful models that British fashion has to offer are eclipsed in the glamour stakes by a bunch of lank-haired, Special Brew-drinking Suffolk rockers.
She can sound uncomfortably nostalgic for what she calls a "golden age" of "female altruism," when "the most brilliant and energetic women in society" worked in the charitable or caring professions — never mind that they often did so for low or no pay.
Chris Hedges, one of our most brilliant political writers, wrote recently: "When did our democracy die?
Check out Gifford hail Carmello as "the most brilliant woman working on Broadway" when she recently visited Jimmy Fallon to discuss the production.
