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On accents
The other day I was musing on acting accents, spurred partly by a discussion in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
james_nicoll's journal about how practically no one gets them right, and partly by a background train of thought on playing Elizabethan theatre. Someone asked me a while back whether I did an English accent for Shakespeare; I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess for upper class characters, at least, I do a mostly region-neutral aristocratic tone. I mused on trying to make my pronunciation at least a bit more British, but as before mentioned accents are very tricky. House, M.D. is passable, and Amy Walker seems pretty convincing to me, but this is a singular talent, I would say, which is not possible, and perhaps not desirable, for the majority of actors to use. Because an accent can also be distracting, and an even slightly imperfect accent doubly so. Some roles, like Captain Fluellen, clearly demand an accent, but that's part of the character, written in to be an accent, and so not a distraction laid on top of it.
Still, there is some thinking out there that Shakespeare is more properly played with an English accent, and so I mused on whether I was doing my parts a disservice by not learning their proper tones. But then, while looking at opinions expressed on various internet fora, I saw a point made that was terribly obvious, and completely changed my thinking: modern British English is as much evolved and changed from Elizabethan English as American English is. So until we can all learn to con a true Elizabethan speech, I do not think we should feel lessened for not speaking in a different incorrect dialect.
james_nicoll's journal about how practically no one gets them right, and partly by a background train of thought on playing Elizabethan theatre. Someone asked me a while back whether I did an English accent for Shakespeare; I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess for upper class characters, at least, I do a mostly region-neutral aristocratic tone. I mused on trying to make my pronunciation at least a bit more British, but as before mentioned accents are very tricky. House, M.D. is passable, and Amy Walker seems pretty convincing to me, but this is a singular talent, I would say, which is not possible, and perhaps not desirable, for the majority of actors to use. Because an accent can also be distracting, and an even slightly imperfect accent doubly so. Some roles, like Captain Fluellen, clearly demand an accent, but that's part of the character, written in to be an accent, and so not a distraction laid on top of it.Still, there is some thinking out there that Shakespeare is more properly played with an English accent, and so I mused on whether I was doing my parts a disservice by not learning their proper tones. But then, while looking at opinions expressed on various internet fora, I saw a point made that was terribly obvious, and completely changed my thinking: modern British English is as much evolved and changed from Elizabethan English as American English is. So until we can all learn to con a true Elizabethan speech, I do not think we should feel lessened for not speaking in a different incorrect dialect.
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I think that folks who are particularly concerned with how to "properly" play it have missed or forgotten a major aspect of theatre - it is entirely "improper". Propriety is, in large part, defined as being in accord with established procedure - for theatre to be proper, there would be one version, one interpretation that was "correct", and all others would be incorrect.
But theatre is dynamic - even from one performance to another in a given production, there is significant variation in the presentation. And between different productions, there is great variance. This is a strength, and is part of why we still do Shakespeare at all - if we had not varied it from its original presentation, we'd likely not care for it at all, as it would not have much meaning for a modern audience.
Fie on propriety, I say!
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Amy Walker is bloody brilliant -- she got most of those close enough to right as to make no difference.
What makes the difference for me with English accents, is class. There's a film of Henry VIII made in 2003 with Ray Winstone as Henry. While it's not bad as these things go (and certainly not nearly as bad as The Tudors!) what completely wrecked it for me was Winstone's obviously working class accent.
The other thing is obviously wrong regional accents. Sean Bean plays Sharpe in the 17 or so made for TV movies of the books by Bernard Cornwell. He does a pretty good job except for one thing: he's got a Yorkshire accent. In the books, Sharpe's from London. Later books have him leaving London during his childhood and living in Yorkshire (to match the movies I presume) but that wouldn't have given him a pure Yorkshire accent.
My accent is middle class southern England overlaid with British Public School/BBC English which has been corrupted by 10 years in South London, 6 years in the Middle East and 20 years in the US -- almost 21 years now.
On my last trip back to England, people thought I was American. Americans however, think my English accent is "cute".
I suspect also that it's not how you say it, it's what you say. "Wicked pissah" doesn't work in an upper class English accent. Nor does "y'all" in a French Canadian one (sort of "y'awl-eh"). I sound American to English ears, as much because of my choice of vernacular as my corrupted accent.
But I can still do a wicked pissah British Raj command voice when needed :)
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Daragh O'Malley though is amusing. He does a lovely "stage Irish" bit at times, usually when confronted by a particularly nasty senior officer. It's a definite shift from his usual self, so it is.