King Lear at the Brian Cox Studio in Glasgow
This afternoon I went along to watch the MA students at the RSAMD performing in a production of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear. As always, when I talk about performances that I’ve seen, I am not reviewing the production, nor critiquing the director or the actors individually. Instead, I examine and investigate the problems that I feel that the actors faced in giving their performance. Overall, I enjoyed it, it’s great to see actors wrangling with the toughest playwright in the English language. His poetry is so powerful, so rich, so bold, so vivid and yet so subtle, it demands powerful , rich, bold, vivid and subtle performances. This is why so often it is easy to be overshadowed by the Poet’s pen when performing Shakespeare.
There were several issues that I think need addressing with relation to acting Shakespeare. Shakespeare is heightened language, so clearly requires a heightened playing style. It’s holding the mirror up to nature, but it isn’t nature, it’s a mirror. Heightened playing styles require heightened performances. This is without doubt. But somewhat like the actors in Ghosts at the Citz at the moment, the actors here failed to get to grips with the emotional content of the play. How the emotional content of the play is ‘written’ into the performance is one, if not THE most essential elements of becoming a truly great actor.
In this show, the emotions and connections were faked. That’s going to sound damning I suppose, but I just think that it’s what the cast struggled with. I do feel that they handled the verse well, but the emotion was what evaded them. Neither faking or shouting is conducive to good story-telling and neither are much fun for an audience to watch. Regularly, an audience will indulge a good performer for not handling emotions well. But indulgence becomes stretched over the course of a long verse drama. I’m not suggesting it’s easy, but it’s a difficult line to tread but it needs to be handled with care.
The second half calmed, the shouting diminished, the articulation seemed to improve greatly, but I had been alienated by the shouty-shout nature of the first act. I stuck in there and the storytelling improved and I reconnected somewhat.
Faking was my second and biggest issue. When you work with actors that have learned to live truthfully within the imaginary circumstances of the scene, faking seems unnecessary. Yet so many actors struggle with it. Acting students MUST be taught HOW to make the connection to their fellow actors. Because faking that connection SCREAMS a lack of connection. Everything that you do on stage should be shaped, measured, driven and changed by what the other actors are doing. One actor who addressed the audience during soliloquy actively engaged the audience when he spoke – this was the closest we got to real connection between actor and… anyone else.
Look – connection isn’t some wanky, magical, ethereal thing, it is a skill to be gained through practice. The basics are easily taught and learned, to get good at it though, like anything takes practice, and finally habituation through continued practice over time.
To both of these issues, I say they are easily addressed. A solid objective for each scene in the form of an essential action in-line with Shakespeare’s intention would guide your behaviour in the scene: your behaviour would be real, the circumstances would be imaginary. Your artistry comes in building a character out of those tactics that fit the scene. Emotion takes care of itself if you know how to allow it to take care of itself. It didn’t cripple the performance, but it also didn’t help the production either.
Next week is Julius Caesar, a play that I am very familiar with and one that I’d say requires a lot less shouting. Overall, the cast did well, and they are 5/12 of the way through their MA course, it shows that they have a journey still to go, but that much has been learned and can be built upon. What it does point to is that beyond any Shakespearean training that they’ve already had at class in the RSAMD and at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, there are some fundamental issues of acting and performance that still need to be addressed.