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Post by tlt on Jul 19, 2016 6:42:32 GMT
I've done a little bit of directing and from my slight experience, some actors are very cerebral in their approach while others are more instinctive. One doesn't trump the other, it's just a type of actor. Just as some actors love warm ups and acting exercises, whereas others will just roll their eyes at the thought and nip out for a ciggie if they can but still do a great performance. From the director's point of view, an actor should be able to take direction but there's nothing wrong with a bit of creative tension in the room (within reason). Some actors are easily put off when not all the cast are singing off the same hymn sheet but are still great actors when the cast gels. Others will do a great performance whatever those around them are doing. For the most part I think training and technique do underpin great performances but actors are so individual - some nervy, some over enthusiastic and need to be reined in, some quiet, some vocal, some cerebral, some instinctive. What makes a great actor is a great question but probably impossible to answer without referring to specific performances after the event rather than being able to build up a photo fit!
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Post by kathryn on Jul 19, 2016 7:17:43 GMT
that would make some sense of when I saw Edward Bennett covering his Hamlet, as whilst of course it was not surprising that his performance was based very much on Tennants (and i saw it the first night he covered so he'd have had little time to develop anything else and not sure as an understudy if you'd be encouraged to do that' it felt very much like someone doing Tennant in that the gestures, ways of speaking were all for Tennant like. This is very true! It felt like he was doing David Tennant's Hamlet. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2016 8:36:18 GMT
In fairness, he sort of had to do David Tennant's Hamlet. It will have thrown the rest of the cast enough that they'd lost their leading man, to then start mixing it up by throwing too many different decisions at them would have been an awful thing. He managed to work out more of a compromise performance by the end of the run, which I enjoyed immensely, but it would be nice to see him play Hamlet for himself.
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Post by joem on Jul 19, 2016 14:16:42 GMT
A great actor forgets himself and becomes the part - through "method" or technique - two means to an end. He makes you believe in what is happening in the play.
The finest performances I've ever seen were probably Gambon in "A View From The Bridge" and Rylance in "Jerusalem". Female actors: Juliet Stevenson in "Hedda Gabler" and Maggie Smith in "The Lady in The Van". This is in itself unfair because I have seen over the years many superb performances and for all I know these were the most memorable at the time for extraneous reasons.
Comments on Suchet are interesting. I thought he was awesome in "Man and Boy" but his accent was all over the place in "Long Day's Journey Into Night". Which didn't mean it wasn't a very good performance otherwise but would stop me from calling it perfect.
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Post by Snciole on Jul 19, 2016 15:19:29 GMT
I know someone who saw it and said he was awful so I wonder how much was about him realising he wasn't as capable as he and Eyre had hoped. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2016 15:24:58 GMT
Maggie Smith in "The Lay in ~The Van" with co-star Robin Askwith? |
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Post by Jan on Jul 19, 2016 15:48:45 GMT
I know someone who saw it and said he was awful so I wonder how much was about him realising he wasn't as capable as he and Eyre had hoped. I saw him in it. He was fine. He got mixed reviews, some very good. The person who was poor in it, by her own admission, was Judi Dench, she left the production early too. She said part of the reason was she had known Day-Lewis' real mother very well and that made it hard to play the part. |
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Post by Jan on Jul 19, 2016 16:07:09 GMT
A great actor forgets himself and becomes the part - through "method" or technique - two means to an end. He makes you believe in what is happening in the play. The finest performances I've ever seen were probably Gambon in "A View From The Bridge" and Rylance in "Jerusalem". Female actors: Juliet Stevenson in "Hedda Gabler" and Maggie Smith in "The Lady in The Van". This is in itself unfair because I have seen over the years many superb performances and for all I know these were the most memorable at the time for extraneous reasons. Comments on Suchet are interesting. I thought he was awesome in "Man and Boy" but his accent was all over the place in "Long Day's Journey Into Night". Which didn't mean it wasn't a very good performance otherwise but would stop me from calling it perfect. Agree on that Gambon performance, electrifying, I saw it the night Arthur Miller was in the audience so it was probably his best shot at it. Surpassed only in my experience by McKellen as Iago which was the most astonishing performance I've ever seen by some distance. |
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Post by Phantom of London on Jul 19, 2016 16:17:25 GMT
Mark Rylance in Jerusalem was absolutely terrible.
By I mean it was one of my early plays and I still got that image of him thumping the drum at the end, looking into the audience, absolutely terrible because this was an entrance level show, that helped me get enthralled in plays and must cost me thousands since.
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Post by joem on Jul 19, 2016 22:14:21 GMT
Mark Rylance in Jerusalem was absolutely terrible. By I mean it was one of my early plays and I still got that image of him thumping the drum at the end, looking into the audience, absolutely terrible because this was an entrance level show, that helped me get enthralled in plays and must cost me thousands since. It was so "terrible" I had to go and see it twice, which I rarely do. What is really terrible is Butterworth's insistence that it could not be recorded for sale and can only be seen at the V&A by prior application. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2016 20:30:00 GMT
It's interesting to see the comments on David Suchet. Years ago, I saw him in Amadeus in Sheffield, and he was wonderful. I can still vividly see the scene where he's met Mozart at a party and is shocked at how awful he is, and is outside in the street listening to an exquisite piece of music from the windows upstairs and is praying to god about the terrible pain he's feeling... It must have been 15 years ago at least, but I can hear him now as clear as anything. I certainly wasn't thinking about him being Poirot, and when I see that scene in my head I don't see a theatre. It was really magical.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 21, 2016 11:58:35 GMT
Seeing the Go Between recently made me remember what a great musical theatre actor Michael Crawford is (seeing him in Phantom at the age of 12 was a formative experience and probably started my older man fetish). But I read him say in an interview that he was wary of playing any role that other actors had played, even in a new production, because he couldn't get the memory of seeing other versions of the character out of his mind. Which slightly irritated me as surely taking something old and making something new from it is a big part of an actor's job?
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