Before the Globe reopened and this could be tested, it was taught for some reason that open air theatres in Shakespeare's day required a broader and bellowier, more unrealistic performing style to compete I suppose with the visible bustle surrounding the actors, but this theory never considered the possibility it might actually be easier to connect with an audience you can see than one sat in the dark, no matter how hermetically sealed, or that broad daylight might actually require greater realism. Mark Rylance, the Globe's first actor manager in nearly four hundred years, proved this beautifully. He was not a bellower. He mumbled. He even stumbled. I last saw him at the Globe playing Richard the Second as a man who, like Alfred Ill in Dürrenmatt's The Visit, realises long before everyone around him that they're going to have to kill him (The Visit's very good), and he was superb, and there was a flub: As the King's world suddenly collapses around him he feels compelled to admit to his followers "I live with bread, like you" but when Rylance played the scene Richard, apparently in a state of shock, said instead "I live with Fred..." and I still remember that flub seventeen years later, a mistake made completely in character, a sign of craftsmanship. So when I found the speech on youtube yesterday I admit I was surprised to see, three minutes and twenty-eight seconds in, Rylance making exactly the same flub. "I live with Fred..." It's possible I saw him on the same night this was recorded. But it's not likely. What an artisan. Here's me bellowing, and Bolingbroke being a cock...
Sunday 26 July 2020
"Fred" and Flint
.
Before the Globe reopened and this could be tested, it was taught for some reason that open air theatres in Shakespeare's day required a broader and bellowier, more unrealistic performing style to compete I suppose with the visible bustle surrounding the actors, but this theory never considered the possibility it might actually be easier to connect with an audience you can see than one sat in the dark, no matter how hermetically sealed, or that broad daylight might actually require greater realism. Mark Rylance, the Globe's first actor manager in nearly four hundred years, proved this beautifully. He was not a bellower. He mumbled. He even stumbled. I last saw him at the Globe playing Richard the Second as a man who, like Alfred Ill in Dürrenmatt's The Visit, realises long before everyone around him that they're going to have to kill him (The Visit's very good), and he was superb, and there was a flub: As the King's world suddenly collapses around him he feels compelled to admit to his followers "I live with bread, like you" but when Rylance played the scene Richard, apparently in a state of shock, said instead "I live with Fred..." and I still remember that flub seventeen years later, a mistake made completely in character, a sign of craftsmanship. So when I found the speech on youtube yesterday I admit I was surprised to see, three minutes and twenty-eight seconds in, Rylance making exactly the same flub. "I live with Fred..." It's possible I saw him on the same night this was recorded. But it's not likely. What an artisan. Here's me bellowing, and Bolingbroke being a cock...
Before the Globe reopened and this could be tested, it was taught for some reason that open air theatres in Shakespeare's day required a broader and bellowier, more unrealistic performing style to compete I suppose with the visible bustle surrounding the actors, but this theory never considered the possibility it might actually be easier to connect with an audience you can see than one sat in the dark, no matter how hermetically sealed, or that broad daylight might actually require greater realism. Mark Rylance, the Globe's first actor manager in nearly four hundred years, proved this beautifully. He was not a bellower. He mumbled. He even stumbled. I last saw him at the Globe playing Richard the Second as a man who, like Alfred Ill in Dürrenmatt's The Visit, realises long before everyone around him that they're going to have to kill him (The Visit's very good), and he was superb, and there was a flub: As the King's world suddenly collapses around him he feels compelled to admit to his followers "I live with bread, like you" but when Rylance played the scene Richard, apparently in a state of shock, said instead "I live with Fred..." and I still remember that flub seventeen years later, a mistake made completely in character, a sign of craftsmanship. So when I found the speech on youtube yesterday I admit I was surprised to see, three minutes and twenty-eight seconds in, Rylance making exactly the same flub. "I live with Fred..." It's possible I saw him on the same night this was recorded. But it's not likely. What an artisan. Here's me bellowing, and Bolingbroke being a cock...
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