The Aspern Papers (by Michael Redgrave) is a devoted, but unrewarding, act of literary piety, more library dust than drama. In transposing Henry James's story. Actor-turned-Playwright Redgrave has animated a book, not given life to a play.
In a moldering Venetian palazzo in the late 19th century sit two desiccated women. Miss Bordereau (Franchise Rosay) is 100 or so and has wrung life dry; her old-maid niece. Miss Tina (Wendy Hiller), has had life squeezed out of her. In swirls a worldly dandy, Henry Jarvis
(Maurice Evans), a publisher and a cultish worshiper of a...