Close your eyes and you'd swear you were listening to Montgomery Clift. Open them, however, and all you have is Ben Chaplin, the young British actor, who may be able to match the indolent flatness of Clift's voice, but lacks the sinuous ambiguity Clift brought to the role of fortune-hunting Morris Townsend in the 1949 movie The Heiress.
That's pretty much how things go in this new adaptation of Washington Square. It reverts to the original title of Henry James' novel about repression and repressiveness among the monied classes of 19th century New York City. But in every other aspect it's...