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The set designer Adam Rigg’s storybook framework, with rolling hills and broad-leaved plants that look like cardboard cutouts, achieves grandeur without aloofness.

Smith is miscast as Myrtle, for a start: Her onstage bearing exudes a homely approachability rather than high-strung poise or inscrutable aloofness.

A Hasidic woman laments what she sees as her second-class status, and a Black parks employee in Brooklyn condemns what he says is the aloofness and “spiritual arrogance” of the Hasidim he has encountered.

An image of aloofness has clung to him, despite attempts to bury it.

While repeated rejection hurts, try to remember that “the aloofness of Seattleites isn’t personal,” said a reader who only identified themselves by the name Libby.