But plot needn't be a straitjacket, rather a sturdy skeleton over which the beautiful drapery of dialogue, characterisation, period and location can be shown off to best advantage.
Stewart bakes hers, and they're nicer than any of my tasters expect, but sturdy rather than light, and hard rather than crunchy.
The quiet, sturdy, rather dull songwriter who steered the group, against the flashy, insecure, deliberately provocative star who left it.
The bare-bones outline of Ida's plot, for example, sounds sturdy rather than spectacular, if not unpromising.
We might see opinion polls as flimsy straws in the wind these days, rather than as sturdy evidential oaks.
Photographs from the period show a sturdy, rather short man, with white whiskers and fashionably slicked hair, glaring at the camera.
The rustic shepherd's pie ($13) yielded finely chopped, nicely seasoned meat, onions and carrots under a load of sturdy, rather than creamy, mashed potatoes.
A few months ago she released "Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook" (Columbia), a less-than-satisfying tribute album, and tonight's performance included a rather blank, if sturdy, rendition of "Tenderly".
Anthony McCarten's adaptation of Jane Wilde Hawking's memoir is sturdy rather than inventive in its structure, though it's more even-handed in its characterisation than you might expect a portrait of Stephen Hawking to be; it's a marital study rather than the bullet-point hagiography it might have been.
