aspiringly

And the evening unfolds as an aspiringly Pirandellian counterpoint of reality and hopefully redemptive fantasy.

Unfortunately, this is all presented with a patient, smiling preachiness, an attitude one associates with aspiringly groovy ministers hoping to recruit young congregation members.

On the losing end of the scale is poor old Sam the chauffeur, Max's aspiringly genteel brother, played with marvelous disapproving primness by John Kavanagh.

And the work's portrayal of Bloomsbury bohemia, here centered on the Lothario painter Augustus John (Ken Kliban), tediously recalls that aspiringly high-brow prurience sometimes found in "Masterpiece Theater" productions.

The leadenness is compounded by Allen's flat connective narrative, in which every new speech seems to begin with the equivalent of "And then I . . . " (Don't even get me started on the aspiringly clever double entendres that pass for sophisticated dialogue.)