It’s Amazing
It’s amazing that audiences seem to understand Shakespeare’s enigmatic dialog when the performers often don’t even know what they’re saying without consulting the drama turd.
(Affectionate nickname for Holly Van Houten, MSF’s resident dramaturge. She’s one of those people who spends a lifetime figuring out what nuggets of wisdom the Bard buried beneath the archaic language.)
Maybe, as director Peter Kjennas believes, people don’t need to fully understand the dialog to know what’s going on in a Shakespeare comedy. Maybe the action and general tone fully communicates its deeper meanings.
Another thing that bothers some folks about Shakespeare is the tendency for many actors to attempt to use British accents when performing his work that mostly come off sounding foppishly foolish.
It’s quite annoying to hear American actors using bad British accents while playing Italians who presumably should really have Italian accents.
Apparently, American actors fail to consider that the reason Shakespeare’s works have been played so much and so well with British accents is because they were mostly played by real British actors talking and reacting normally in their own voice who would not attempt to use a cheesy sounding foreign accent.
I believe Americans playing Italians or other foreigners in a British play ought not try to emulate Gielgud or Olivier and just talk as naturally and realistically as they can in their own voices - within the bounds of the imaginary circumstances, of course.
British actors playing Nazis, for example don’t try to use bad German accents either.
But American actors portraying Germans seem somehow compelled to affect some bad accent they heard in old WWll movies.
The problem - especially with Shakespeare - is that actors often spend so much time crafting what mostly end up being poor caricatures that they overlook the opportunity to find real reactive moments and lose the opportunity for meaningful communication with their fellow actors. And that, of course, generally results in pedestrian performances which would probably greatly disturb the Bard were he still around.
I hope that one day we can present an updated version of a Shakespeare work which will be understood by modern audiences and still knock the proverbial socks off even the purists.
2 comments June 22nd, 2008
