The pretentious Barry Morse combines the cynicism and misanthropic personas of famed classic movie columnists Waldo Lydecker ("Laura") and Addison DeWitt ("All About Eve") and especially "The Man Who Came to Dinner's" Sheridan Whiteside, all megalomaniac characters who were at least charming as part of a facade. There's little to find charm in Morse's arrogant theater critic, verbally abusive to everybody around him under a slight layer of class. But once he begins to speak (revealing his disgust towards mankind), he becomes crass, and the way he talks to butler Cyril Delavanti and wife Joan Hackett makes you hate him immediately, even though he's presenting his much younger spouse with a player piano.
It's all part of a birthday party for Hackett where the guests are hypnotized into making fools out of themselves once the piano player starts rolling. The cruelest victim of his prank is the heavyset Muriel Landers who all of a sudden becomes a little girl in her own mind, dancing in front of the dozen or so guests, and not realizing the motivation for Morse's prank. But things soon turn on Morse that Landers helps point out and why Morse has become the way he is.
This is psychological drama at its finest with its ultra dramatic leading character basically having a similar breakdown that Joseph Wiseman did in "One More Pallbearer", doomed to be left alone as soon as he is exposed for who he really is. Morse gets to chew the scenery a bit, revealing his jealousy over a playwright acquaintance whose plays he has panned ("Critics critique because they can't write themselves"), and it is obvious that the piano he buys has a harsh effect on those whose minds are not strong enough to block it from revealing the inner secrets of their souls. The music of the piano rolls may be beautiful indeed, but the music of the human souls it brings out in the weak listening to it really is closer to a death march.
It's all part of a birthday party for Hackett where the guests are hypnotized into making fools out of themselves once the piano player starts rolling. The cruelest victim of his prank is the heavyset Muriel Landers who all of a sudden becomes a little girl in her own mind, dancing in front of the dozen or so guests, and not realizing the motivation for Morse's prank. But things soon turn on Morse that Landers helps point out and why Morse has become the way he is.
This is psychological drama at its finest with its ultra dramatic leading character basically having a similar breakdown that Joseph Wiseman did in "One More Pallbearer", doomed to be left alone as soon as he is exposed for who he really is. Morse gets to chew the scenery a bit, revealing his jealousy over a playwright acquaintance whose plays he has panned ("Critics critique because they can't write themselves"), and it is obvious that the piano he buys has a harsh effect on those whose minds are not strong enough to block it from revealing the inner secrets of their souls. The music of the piano rolls may be beautiful indeed, but the music of the human souls it brings out in the weak listening to it really is closer to a death march.