Ms. Ruehl's wonderfully shrewd performance never entirely lifts the veil on the secrets of Eva's heart.
While PoftheO had the mesmerizing "Music of the Night" sequence, Michael Crawford's shrewd performance, at least four songs with memorable (if slightly reminiscent) melodies, Maria Bjornson's magical sets and Harold Prince's eye for visual attractions (distractions?), there were--and remain--deadly-serious drawbacks to the enterprise.
The same is true for the shrewd performances of Michael Mastro, as the Pollitts' unctuous older son, Gooper, and Amy Hohn, as his rapacious wife, Mae, a "monster of fertility," who hopes, through her rapid production of children, to raise Gooper's stock as an heir.
Richard Gere gave a shrewd, likeable performance as a manipulative, lying S.O.B. in the little-seen "Arbitrage," Nicholas Jarecki's sure-handed film about how to cover up the death of a girlfriend and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars when you're a one-per-center.
Hecht and Light both give shrewd comic performances, with Light kvetching impeccably and Hecht spitting poison darts — she compares Bing Crosby's yuletide crooning to a "tiny acoustic rape" — with breathy serenity.
Hecht and Light both give shrewd comic performances, with Light kvetching impeccably and Hecht spitting poison darts—she compares Bing Crosby's yuletide crooning to a "tiny acoustic rape"—with breathy serenity.
He gives a strenuous, at times shrewd and acid performance, which has been embedded, unfortunately, in a clumsy and ineffective movie.
In this shrewd and bristly performance piece, Eric Bogosian turns his gimlet eye upon himself and finds himself wanting, complicit in the cultural wasteland he abhors.
"I'm so smart," he says near the end of this shrewd and bristly performance piece, his manner overcaffeinated, his large hands working in front of him imploringly.
Joanna Scanlan gives a shrewd and sensitive performance as Dickens's neglected wife, Catherine, and Kristin Scott Thomas plays Nelly's mother, complicit in the affair.
Journalist and writer from The New York Times Jon Pareles branded the performance "shrewd", and claimed Carey's cover of "I'll Be There" "set off fireworks".
