Arabians learn Arabian with the speed of summer lightning.
And
Hebrews learn it backwards,
which
is absolutely frightening.
But use proper English you're
regarded as a freak.
Why
can't the English,
Why
can't the English learn to speak?
So
sang Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins in the musical My Fair Lady, a 1956 Broadway musical based on Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. The professor has made a bet
with a friend that he can transform a cockney flower girl, Eliza
Rex
Harrison was an excellent choice for the part because he was one of the old
school like Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier whose skill had
been honed in the theatre, where one had to project one’s voice in order to be
heard in the stalls, never mind the gallery. An actor had to speak out;
otherwise the audience would be literally left in the dark.
In 1951
Marlon Brando mumbled his way across the silver screen in the film of Tennessee
Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire. He
used something called Method Acting, a
technique developed by Constantin Stanislavski, a Russian actor and
director. In this method the actor aims at a complete identification with the
person he is portraying. Unfortunately, Brando set a style that inarticulate
mumbling under the breath is a sign of realistic acting and the traditional
style came to be thought of as old fashioned and theatrical.
Whether
they are consciously applying Stanislavsky’s method or not so many modern
actors today are bedeviled by the need to mumble under their breath, especially
in initiate love scenes. It seems they believe that to speak clearly would
somehow violate the intimacy. And so the love scene becomes an exchange of
inaudible whispering between the lovers in which the audience is left out.
Am I
old fashioned to want to know what is going on in a movie or a novel? A certain
amount of mystification I can stand. It’s not only that actors don’t speak
English, but the action is too fast or the plots over-mystify. So many mystery
series like Midsummer Murders start
off quite easy to follow, but gradually winds themselves into such a tangle of
complications that I literally lose the plot.
With
the forced idleness of recuperation – I have been sick for a few months now – I
am discovering my difficulties with television. Audibility and articulation is
certainly a problem. I wonder, perhaps if, with US shows, it might help to
introduce sub-titles for English speaking audiences !
Shakespeare
knew that the play’s not the thing, the audience
is the thing. That’s why his characters would often speak asides directly to
the audience so that they were included. A play is for the sake of the
audience. A play is not to show off the actors or clever directors or fabulously
ingenious plots. A play is to enchant the audience; and an audience has to be
able to comprehend, to be included, in what is going on.
When
being entertained by a play, like most people I’m sure, I have this childish
desire to be included in what is going on, to be able to identify with the
characters and their lives. Drama as we know it originated in ancient Greece
where the audience was very much included. Everyone knew the myths which the
theatre dramas played out. There was no mystification. The actors spoke their
lines from behind masks and had to project their voices into the open air
theater. Moreover, seated in the Greek thearon,
everyone knew what was happening to Oedipus in Sophocles’ play – the whole
point of the story was that Oedipus didn’t know. He was ignorant of where fate was leading him, but not the audience. They knew in advance his tragic destiny and
could be thoroughly involved as it was gradually revealed. But they knew every
step beforehand. They knew the story; and as every child will tell you, you
have to know how the story goes. Otherwise the whole thing is spoiled.
contact:
stanrich@vodafone.co.nz
(03) 981 2264
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