It is well mannered, well written and instantly forgettable. Freddie is a subtle and powerful old woman, legendary in the London theatrical world. The Temple, her school for child actors, is famous, her stinginess fabled, her methods baffling. Hannah and Pierce are her ill-paid instructors, Mattie and Jonathan her precocious young students. Mattie pursues Jonathan, investors pursue Freddie.
Nothing is resolved.
Often the dialogue and narrative achieve a serpentine intricacy, both exhausting and obscure. Change, but not difference. As long as I stay there, the place will be identical. I don't get you,' '' says the confused businessman, and so may the confused reader. And though we are told repeatedly that Freddie is fascinating, she appears merely to be a shabby old woman with boiled blue eyes, a musty smell and plans too complicated to reveal, for which last we may feel grateful.