Category: Acting

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Acting

April


A delicious sampling of the uptown New York theatre scene. This week; in this order: Anything Goes, War Horse, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Any More, Lombardi, and Freud’s Last Session. With these daily viewings I know how a Tony voter must feel. I’m here to report that there’s no shortage of talent this season.
First I want to say something about Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. On the force of love-letter reviews and consistently delighted audiences, the run of The Importance of Being Earnest has been extended to early July. I left the company (my choice to do so, just in case you were wondering) two weeks ago, and have been at large taking in shows. Brian has had a long, distinguished, and hugely successful career as a man of the theatre. He is a highly accomplished performer in all departments, although his great strength is comedy, and he has some x factor too.
X factor?
There’s a part of his talent which is not easy to imitate or understand. Back in 2001 I worked with Brian in a similar function to the one I’ve just performed in the Earnest company – see my last blog entry – when I understudied him as Sganarelle in The Moliere Comedies in Los Angeles. On the first night at The Mark Taper Forum there was one of those wonderful moments that can only happen in live theatre. A laugh that peaked, fell, rose to another peak, and another beyond that, and finally, after several crescendos erupted into a round of applause.
What happened was this: on the line ‘All this is true no doubt…’ a lady way back in the house spontaneously uttered a sympathetic groan of agreement. Brian was sufficiently in the moment (he always is as an actor) and sufficiently on the back foot (something a comic has to be even in frenetic moments) to respond to the sound, and work what had happened into a laugh that went for more than a minute (a very long time on stage). And all he did was look.
He looked out into the house to see where the sound had come from. Then he stood still and thought about it. Then he turned front and thought some more. Then he turned back to the lady. Each of these movements was simple and minimal, exquisitely timed and therefore punctuated with another wave of laughter. Finally he took two steps in the direction of the lady (she now helpless with mirth), and the house, as the saying goes, fell in.
It may not sound like much as described in a couple of fumbling paragraphs, but, and you’ll have to take my word for it, if you had been there you would have experienced a great comedic actor displaying the prime of his ability.
The reason I’ve tried to describe this moment in detail is this: the skill level in the theatrical community is high, which is as it should be, and not particularly surprising – given that people naturally get good at things they practise. Of course senior actors routinely bemoan the lack of linguistic technique, or the corrupted vowels in the generation coming up. And, of course, mistakes (particularly in casting) do occur, and also (of course) public perception is shaped by the organs of media – in this town, by the mighty New York Times – with sometimes, silly results. But on the whole, people are pretty good at what they do. So too with Brian Bedford. His ability to speak classical text and make even the most opaque of it clear to a contemporary audience… well he has a mastery in that department. Again, not surprising given his many decades of work… but the ability to ride a piece of the present moment  (that which the sages of all traditions tell us is the gateway to eternity), and to shape it, that, that is inimitable. It’s x-factor. 
Talking of which:
Sutton Foster in Anything Goes sheds light that is pure fun. For virtuosity in hoofing and singing this is one to see. I suspect that some parts of New York taste will compare her with the last Broadway production starring Patti LuPone whose virtuosity comes from a very different part of the forest. There’s a simplicity here, and a purity, also reflected in the design, which makes the evening a confection you just want to have.
War Horse transferred from The Royal National Theatre in London, now with an all American cast – well, they make a horse gallop on stage with puppetry. World War One seen through the eyes of a cavalry horse – amazing.
The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore: fascinating. Tennessee Williams in his own last act struggling with mortality, the text moves from the transcendent to the vicious, from the quotidian to the rare. Kudos to The Roundabout (my late employers) for producing this little-known play.
Lombardi: a simple story, simply told – with a lot of heart. The finest ensemble acting I’ve ever seen on Broadway. Led by a star turn in Dan Lauria, and another one in Judith Light, the play is beautifully staged in the round, and the acting is superb and somehow allowed to breathe – a welcome feature in an environment where plays are frequently over-directed.
Freud’s Last Session: starring the splendid Mark Dold of my acquaintance (I was Court Composer to his Emperor in Amadeus) is a piece of thinking person’s theatre. A very verbal play treating on the hypothetical meeting between Freud in his last year of life and the young C.S. Lewis. Astoundingly successful. Originating at the Barrington Stage in Pittsfield Mass., has now played more than 10 months off-Broadway, with several regional productions in development.
But for now I’ve quit the maelstrom of theatrical New York and gone to San Diego, California to appear in the US premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s 74th play, Life of Riley, at The Old Globe. The character I’m to play is called ‘Colin’ – a tweedy middle-aged Englishman.

Now who do we know like that?
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Acting

December


Every once in a while there comes a cherry on life’s cup cake. My present job for example.
I’m covering the two butlers in The Importance of Being Earnest in New York, or to put it alliteratively; bystanding for a brace of butlers on Broadway.
It’s an unusual production and my workload in it is unusually (and most agreeably) light.
The celebrated Brian Bedford (Tony winner, five time Drama Desk winner) is playing Lady Bracknell. One assumes that Oscar Wilde was not consciously writing this role for drag, but it has become vogue for male actors to play it. Something about her stentorian dominance, given definitively by Dame Edith Evans in the 1952 film of the play, attracts a man’s idea of what such women are. Indeed, the role has been essayed by Dames Maggie and Judi, who stand alone at the  very peak of English speaking theatre, but neither of whom found an answer to Dame Edith’s reading of ‘In a handbag.’ Noted north American productions where men have played Lady Bracknell include: Edward Hibbert (Longwharf), Bill Hutt (Stratford, Ontario), and Ellis Rabb (Lyceum, Broadway). The production I am currently involved with also originated in Stratford, Ontario, where Brian Bedford has been a featured leading man for many years.
Brian is splendid, as is all the cast, more on that later – but the star of this production is Desmond Heeley for his transcendent sets and costumes. Broadway stages command the best design skills in the country and the biggest budgets. But step back a minute and consider the Broadway environment. It is driven (as is all theatrical production) by money, but on Broadway by much more money than in any other theatrical context in the world. The pressures on all involved are enormous, because a show which fails is just horribly expensive; that, and it should be noted, the baroque taste of the most influential New York theatre critics; and the fact that there is such absurd over-supply of actors, has evolved the Broadway style of performance, that hundred-and-ten-percent look-at-me commitment. An energy that flashes and dazzles, and perhaps satisfies or confounds the paying customer into believing that they actually got something of value for the astonishing price of their tickets. Likewise with design. Adjectives that usually apply are: flashy, stylish, unrelenting.
But this is different: The Importance requires two interiors and a garden. And Desmond Heeley’s design begins with a masterpiece of a front cloth which covers the whole proscenium arch. It is a stunning visual before the show begins. It is a painting of Britannia with the sun rising behind her and the letters V. R. (Victoria Regina) rising above, the rays of sunlight catching the lettering and making it shine like gold leaf. Above the front cloth there is a deep red (the usual colour of theatrical curtains) teaser (also crafted by Desmond Heeley) which supplies a fringe of tassels, curled in secret swirls, referencing the velvet plush of Victorian upholstery.
In Act One we’re in Algernon’s Apartment, the palette is based on a series of silver grays, the same tones echoed in the furniture and the dressing, but variations played with a master’s touch. Three paintings grace the walls, but where a lessor artist would have settled for a painting of the time, Desmond has painted his own. His figures are softique, even the frames at their edges seem to flirt with another dimension that looking at directly you can’t quite define, but when you see peripherally, hint of places where there is more style and meaning than we commonly know.
For the garden scene in act two, he gives us a profusion of roses, but an abundance, not a surplus. The quantities and the colour just so. In Act three we are in a morning room with a glass paneled conservatory upstage, and grounds beyond – but here’s the magic – the glass is painted on a scrim – he doesn’t bother with real glass and all its stage issues of reflection and glare, the result is one of heightened realism.
But the signal feature of each of the three settings is this: on first sight they are stunning – they draw applause as the front cloth rises – but as the playing of the scenes proceeds, the set fades from the spotlight. It’s the same with the costumes. They are bold for sure – Gwendolyn’s act one gown shimmering between light silver and white cream, and her curled jet black hat is a late-Victorian precursor to something by Aubrey Beardsley with his seductive lines or even Jean Cocteau with his gossamer ones.
The summary is this: the design supports the play, the story and the actors, rather than, as can be the case, competing with them. It’s an example of design virtuosity from a master of his craft, whose focus is first on the work, not on himself.
A similar purity of discipline is displayed in the acting. Under Brian’s precise (unusually precise) direction, the comedy moves forward with energy and intent. It is a truism of comic wisdom that one well placed big laugh is better than four or five small ones. The Importance is a challenge of good taste in this way because it’s possible to get a laugh on every line. Brian’s own performance is deliciously understated. Wisely he does not confront Dame Edith’s rendition, but makes memorable emphasis in other parts of the text – I won’t say which, in case you happen to see it – we play till March. He is, like his designer, a master of technique, so Lady Bracknell’s feminine treble flutes and pitches with the best stage dames, but he has certain characteristics as an actor which are beyond price on a stage. Chief among them is his depth of belief in the world which the character inhabits. It is this, much beyond his considerable vocal skills, or adeptness at navigating classical text, that gives him a direct line to the audience.
And where do I come in?
There are certain keys to understudy engagements: if you’re smart, you don’t cover a star. And you don’t cover Hamlet – although Jeremy Northam broke both these rules when he covered Daniel Day Lewis at The National in London, and it doesn’t seem to have hurt his career.
In this job I am required to be well acquainted with thirty four witty lines of dialogue in eight small but crucial entrances. 
So I come in to the theatre at a half hour before curtain, I climb the five flights to my well appointed dressing room, and for three agreeable hours I do my own work under the aegis of an immensely stylish production. 
I’ll call that a cherry.
Categories
Acting

November

October



Question: when is a play not a play?


Answer: when it’s Hamlet.


It’s always the Tuesday evening after the final Sunday performance that it hits you that it’s over. In the States, that is. In England and Australia other timetables apply.


In American regional theatre when Tuesday showtime comes, the company has dispersed and is many miles away from the stage where they lately were a performing unit. And that’s when the muscle memory kicks in. If you did a vocal warm up (as I did on this one), there’s no reason to do one today. The identity that you checked at the stage door on a daily basis for the past six weeks makes a pale attempt to repossess your psyche, while the identity that you crafted in the work is now as surplus to requirements as the costume you donned.


I’ve been at large in American regional theatre for over seven years now and I’d just like to put it on record that it’s a falsity to think or to say that theatre in this country is not subsidized. On the contrary, it is heavily subsidized by all who work in it. I find it moving that actors driven by vocational passion will travel far from home on the chance of a good production and live their dream for a few brief weeks, knowing that they’ll likely return to selling pizza when it’s over.


A return to Little Rock Arkansas, my second time there but my first ever in Hamlet. If anyone had told me back in college – yes, you will be in a production of Hamlet one day… in Little Rock… well I wouldn’t have thunk it.


And why is Hamlet not a play? Not an ordinary play at least?


Because it is so well known that some audiences could sing along with the text. In Little Rock we performed in more or less ideal conditions for a production of this play in the modern age. Fewer people around here have seen the play than in say New York where film star Jude Law recently played it. What does this mean? It means that the audience actually follows the story (it’s a good one), rather than evaluating the production/acting/design as they go.


Personally I’ve always found Hamlet to be a tough one. Long, confusing, hard to follow. I speak as one who knows the text well. As a young actor I listened to Sir John Gielgud (surely the greatest exponent of Shakespearean verse speaking) on more or less endless loop. I’ve seen a couple of dozen Hamlets, admired actors, but seldom if ever been moved by a production – Anton Lessor in Jonathan Miller’s was an exception.


George Hall, who ran the acting course at Central in London where I trained, said “On the first night of Hamlet, the questions were the same: “Will they get it? Will the fights work? And will the old fool playing the king remember his lines?”


Now that I am that old fool I know what he meant.


George was full of wise saws and modern instances, and in those days I thought he knew just about everything there was to know about acting – still think that, actually.


Of Robert Newton, he said: “His final consonants were a matter of chance, he had a body that was held together by tension, but when he came on as the button moulder in act four of Peer Gynt, he was coming from a place that most of us have never been to.’


We had an actor like that in Little Rock. His name is Harris Berlinsky and the world is a better place because he is in it. Harris played Polonius with easy grace. His portrayal of the character was accessible and fascinating, yet his backstage confusions were legendary. It was never certain which of the four entrances he would use to get on stage. Occasionally he made a guest entrance in a scene in which Polonius does not usually appear, wandering off about half way through. It was a great pleasure and a privilege to work with him.


A theatrical company away from home is a meeting of intimate strangers who become friends. Replicating behaviors together for the public view, binds you as a group. The character of such groups varies hugely. In the larger theatrical centres the group is vulnerable to the follies of status, ambition, and competition. But usually, regionally, those pressures are less. This particular collection of abstracts and brief chronicles was multi-national, multi ethnic, and multi talented. We included a sharpshooter, indie film makers, linguists (portuguese, japanese, mandarin, spanish), fabulous amateur bakers, corporate consultants, and sundry entrepreneurs.


Even to someone familiar with the play, hearing a performance from backstage is an experience full of small and new recognitions of text. “Ah that’s where that comes from.” So much of the text has passed into everyday usuage. To name but a few:


In my mind’s eye


The primrose path of dalliance


Brevity is the soul of wit


Caviar to the general


The lady doth protest too much


Assume a virtue if you have it not


A hit, a very palpable hit


For quotability Hamlet stands alone. From: “… neither a borrower nor a lender be…” through “… there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow…” to “… and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”


And what about titles derived?


The play’s the thing (Molnar & P. G. Wodehouse)


Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Stoppard)

Single Spies (Alan Bennet)


Summer’s Lease (John Mortimer)


And a casual search turned up this amazing anagram:


To be or not to be: that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…


becomes:


In one of the Bard’s best thought of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.


Or to quote another Shakespearean epilogue: “The King’s a beggar now the play is done…”

Categories
Acting

September

The blogger could still be said to be on holiday.


Southern California is southern Florida for grown ups.


The same crowded north/south highways, temperate winters, long beaches. But south Florida allowed rampant development on the sand right next to the water’s edge and now some of the shoreline over there looks like a bad case of gingivitis with the waves lapping at the foundations of the endless condominiums. Sure California has the impending Big One which will turn western Utah into beachfront property.


I like it in San Diego. The place has it all; a year round friendly climate, the Dr. Seuzzical landscape, and of course The Old Globe Theatre, this season including the esteemed Trish Conolly appearing in a play called The Last Romance. And now me – affiliated to the aforementioned actress of note – enjoying a holiday here.


It’s particularly satisfying when a play speaks directly to its audience. The Last Romance is a gentle little piece set in a park. Its three principal characters are all in their senior years. Although in this production its three actors are all more vital than any couch potato half their physical ages. It’s no overstatement to say that Marion Ross is a television icon, she played Mrs. Cunningham in Happy Days and was known for decades in that role throughout the English speaking world. Her partner in life, Paul Michael plays her would be suitor, and Trish plays his sister. There’s a fourth character, an opera singer who plays the younger version of the old man, here played and sung by Joshua Jeremiah in terrific voice. Theatres the world over are tending to attract older patrons. Are they the only ones who can afford the tickets? Or are they the only ones with time? In this case it was a happy meeting of play and audience. I saw the play three times and each time there was the special silence that comes when the audience leans forward not wanting to miss a word. It’s a touching play that surely will reach a wide audience in many future productions.


When The Old Globe was established in the 1930s as a (temporary) Shakespeare Festival – attendance in the first season was equal to twice the then population of San Diego, its native city – back then there were three such festivals in the continental USA. Today there are more than a hundred and fifty three. So the Shakespeare Festival has been immensely successful as a brand.


The Old Globe has, over the past two generations of artistic leadership established itself as one of the major American regional theatrical centers, and now also feeds high end product to Broadway with such hits as The Full Monty, Hairspray, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and a string of others – this policy, brokered under Jack O’ Brien’s leadership – for which he collected several Tony awards, raised the profile of The Old Globe as an institution and in the process further tamped the path of Broadway supply which many regional theaters now wish to tread.


All that hotbed of theatrical activity aside; the San Diego environment with all its Eucalyptus trees on the improbable hills, the theatre itself sited in the heart of Balboa Park lulls one into a dreamy comfort.


So I’m impressed that I’ve got it together enough to announce a firm commitment to 21st century life by buying a smartphone. Not the very sleekest latest wafer, but one that was the cutting edge way back in the distant past of tech-time – like three months ago, and now heavily discounted to clear the stock as the new generation customers queuing round the block. Just in time to get one of these gadgets it seems, because from San Diego we spent a couple of weeks working the town in Los Angeles, where the phone as accessory is noted.


Los Angeles is industrial strength San Diego.


And then a quick trip to Portland Oregon, where the landscape and the fauna are so different from southern California it’s hard to believe they’re the same country. We came here to see my friend, the extraordinary Joe Graves, perform a one man version of the Iliad.


Yes, that’s right, the epic narrative poem by Homer telling the story of the Trojan war and the struggles of the Gods and Heros for possession of the human soul.


Doesn’t sound like a natural for a theatre piece does it? And yet… here the story was framed by the rather brilliant device of the poet (Homer, apparently is a generic name given to poets and story tellers) being touched by alcoholic divine madness and impelled to tell the story. The verse juxtaposed with modern invention – particularly effective when dealing with the inevitable lists of names you get in epics. And one stunning section where the narrator lists some of the endless wars humanity has engaged in over the centuries and you wonder what the hell we are doing with our lives.


There is something cathartic about stories of large scale slaughter. If well told, they can give you a homeopathic dose of the same emotional journey as the characters you are hearing about, but save you the bother of having to live through those experiences. Result: you feel more peaceable. That’s the theory anyway.


I am by nature a lefty liberal type, but there is one issue on which I feel we could employ extreme sanctions. For people who don’t switch their smart phones off in theatres. How about a mandatory app that would melt the phone’s interior?

Categories
Acting

August

The blogger was on holiday.