Stevie

This at least captures two fine performances, both from the original stage production of Hugh Whitemore's play about the late poet Stevie Smith, the Emily Dickinson of Palmers Green: Glenda Jackson as Stevie, Mona Washbourne as her maiden aunt. But the screen adaptation is fairly calamitous. Instead of sucking us into Stevie Smith's claustrophobic world, it jolts us about with sepia flashbacks, mood shots of trains entering tunnels and of Highgate Ponds in winter. Perhaps such tricks were needed, though, to obscure the play's lack of direct action: it's almost entirely reminiscences and confidences.