unsentimental

Fanning often deploys an unsentimental reserve that’s very effective from a dramatic standpoint.

In “A Strange Loop,” he confronts the issue head-on by focusing on a musical theater writer who’s trying to create a show that reflects his own unsentimental reality.

At Bortolami gallery, there is Philip Pearlstein, whose dramatically cropped, unsentimental figures were profoundly unfashionable when he introduced them in the early 1960s.

Elizabeth sees Ale, sees him fully, and, in a lovely, utterly unsentimental moment, advises him, “Get a name and become a problem for them.”

It’s the last line of the piece and characteristic of her concise, unsentimental generosity.