I chanced onto this starting with scenes between Robards and Richardson and then watched it through several scenes with all four of the main characters.
You could set your watch by the regularity of the emotional 180 degree turns. It became too patterned, to formulaic. Everyone including Hepburn was called on to switch in mid-sentence from angry to forgiving and back again, or some other pair of opposing emotions.
Yes, that happens in real life, but not 10 times a minute.
I don't fault the actors, they gave as convincing a go at is as would be humanly possible. But the end result was unconvincing, even a bit more than irritating. One could never forget they were watching a play and not real life.
You could set your watch by the regularity of the emotional 180 degree turns. It became too patterned, to formulaic. Everyone including Hepburn was called on to switch in mid-sentence from angry to forgiving and back again, or some other pair of opposing emotions.
Yes, that happens in real life, but not 10 times a minute.
I don't fault the actors, they gave as convincing a go at is as would be humanly possible. But the end result was unconvincing, even a bit more than irritating. One could never forget they were watching a play and not real life.