3 PERFORMANCES

I haven’t blogged in quite a while.

Sometimes, it gets hard to keep moving forwards, when the ocean of those that applaud bad acting, praising performances so fake and false it makes me ill, lauding bullshit sold as gold – it seems a wave to tall to conquer.

When people will settle for anything, as long as they feel like actors, when they are capable of so much more. When they have that ability within them, that they will not dig to find, when they will instead, produce weaker and weaker performances, because feeling like an actor is more important to their egos that becoming the best actor they can be.

This week, in a trip to London, I saw THREE performances in London. I saw an all-star cast perform Jez Butterworth’s Mojo, a play so dull and overacted that biting the inside of my mouth was more fun for two hours. I saw Robert Redford in All Is Lost give a masterclass in why acting is doing, not showing. And then Jude Law, who I was really ready to tear to shreds, stun me and raise the hairs on my neck in Michael Grandage’s production of Henry V.

And I started to wonder. What did the Law/Redford do right that the cast of Mojo got so wrong?

THE CAST OF MOJO (THERE IS NO SYMBOL FOR NO STARS) 

This is a serious cast, including major young television actors like Rupert Grint, Colin Morgan and Ben Wishaw. And yet, the instructions to them seem to be, “the audience are stupid, show them everything you are thinking and show it on your face preferably, or make it into a pantomime if you can.”

We left the theatre depressed. 4 and 5 stars from the top critics. Quotes about the standards of acting that indicate how low the standards of acting have sunk.

 But I do not blame the actors. They are fine young men and hard working up there on the stage. But no one told them they didn’t need to treat us like idiots, that the audience are drawn into a performance when they are MADE to.

You do not need to show the audience what to think or feel. They are smarter than that, they are smarter than you! Leave your gurning, and playing every scene for the audience to pantomime.

Barely a moment of truth for a second on the stage of the Harold Pinter Theatre.

But actors everywhere, don’t despair. There are two gentlemen who show just how to do it:

ROBERT REDFORD (*****)

All is Lost, must have been a tough sell. It’s about a guy on a boat. One character, barely any dialogue. It is a masterclass of truthful acting. He doesn’t try to tell the audience anything. He does things. For real. In a boat. For 90 minutes. And I was with him the whole way. One man in a boat.

He didn’t try to show me how we felt. He didn’t presume I couldn’t understand the peril of his situation and so I needed to be shown it. He understood, that a man trying to save himself from doom would make me root for him. 

JUDE LAW (****)

First off, he wasn’t acting. He was doing Shakespeare, a heightened language, but he wasn’t showing us everything, he was simply being and doing. There was character, a young feisty king with a sense of humour and a bit of temper, but he wasn’t demonstrating it to us. He was doing things to people under the words. He was engaged with them, he was playing and he wasn’t acting one bit.

 He played the comedy to the audience, without over doing, he made his way strongly through the big speeches without reaching for help from Branagh or Olivier, he captured mine when he asked the God of Battles to steel his soldiers heart.

I am not a fan of Jude Law. Not on film. But again, by simply being, and simply doing, he held my attention again and again.

What’s the difference. Very simple. Film actors don’t feel the need to ‘act’. The Mojo Gang, all film and television experienced, didn’t trust that when they came to the theatre.