{"id":1255,"date":"2016-03-14T20:59:03","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T20:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1255"},"modified":"2016-03-14T21:09:18","modified_gmt":"2016-03-14T21:09:18","slug":"all-in-the-acting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2016\/03\/all-in-the-acting.html","title":{"rendered":"All in the acting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PM<\/a><\/p>\n

You might think someone who had spent a hefty proportion of their evenings in the theatre, at the movies, in front of TV dramas or news broadcasts of politicians might have a few ideas of what acting is about. But, like many audience members, I still consider it a little bit of magic. The alchemy of turning second-hand words into first-hand emotion.<\/p>\n

You might also think that a theatre critic would spend much of their time writing about acting. Lights, sets, sound are all fine \u2013 but isn\u2019t theatre\u2019s core live humans doing human things while other humans watch? Yet the squeeze of print reviews often whittles descriptions of actors down to single adjectives. It\u2019s unfair, because that intangible connection between eye, ear, body and brain is the thrill of theatre going.<\/p>\n

Bloody\u00a0hard to write about though. No wonder we describe the set, parse the director\u2019s decisions. They\u2019re easier to isolate. Take Robert Icke\u2019s transfixing Uncle Vanya<\/a><\/em> at London\u2019s Almeida Theatre. We can identify the production\u2019s distinctive choices. The anglicised names (\u201cUncle Johnny\u201d) and springy text. The slow-revolving stage that returns to its starting position over the course of each act \u2013 an apt metaphor for a situation that mills through stasis, develops yet doesn\u2019t seem to change. The thick wooden posts at each corner which, together with the Almeida\u2019s own thickets of iron pillars, means that all views of the stage are interrupted, all views of the action partial. Another apt metaphor for Chekhov\u2019s shifting perspectives and his niggling refusal of grand overviews.<\/p>\n

Time’s grind<\/strong><\/p>\n

All true. I relished them all, noticed that the production\u2019s measured length (three and a half hours) never dragged, felt time do its work and seem barely to move. The idea of actors moving through extreme emotion night after night often boggles me \u2013 how do they pulse that pain through the body every evening? Everyone in Chekhov\u2019s play registers at least a moment of stabbing extremity, but what they fear most keenly is flatlining. Boredom, desensitised and desiccated. Time\u2019s whirligig can be exciting. Time\u2019s grind is hard.<\/p>\n

In Uncle Vanya<\/em> I didn\u2019t \u2013 this is utterly subjective \u2013 believe much that Ann Queensberry said as the family\u2019s elderly nanny, but I believed everything she did:<\/em> the tactful tea-ferrying and wool-wrangling. But everyone else did it for me. Richard Lumsden\u2019s lodger, hiding from his rage and inability to negotiate the world, temper periodically detonating like a mine in a rice pudding. Susan Wooldridge chilly matriarch, plumping her favourite cushion like a reproach, holding face and body in abeyance, even as her son cried out for a cuddle. Hilton McRae\u2019s professor, holding the firebrand within the old fart, made peevish by acclaim and mummified in tenure.<\/p>\n

Seen from the inside<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the actors in larger roles, it\u2019s even harder to pin down what they do, except that you feel they\u2019ve started from a blank page, seen their characters from the inside. It shouldn\u2019t be unusual, until you realise how rarely it\u2019s achieved. Each has a lumpy array of glitch and gesture that could be mannered eccentricity, but is more like an amateur poker player\u2019s tell. It\u2019s hard to play a character whom everyone describes \u2013 dismisses? \u2013 as beautiful. Vanessa Kirby makes Elena, the professor\u2019s young wife, fretful at that description. She scrunches up her face, mounds up her hair, gurns like Caitlin Moran at a photoshoot. It\u2019s as if she perversely relishes her klutziness, whether struggling out of her jumper or snogging like a first-timer. See? I\u2019m not a doll. But, then, what am I?<\/p>\n

As Sonya \u2013 the good girl, the always-described-as-homely girl \u2013 Jessica Brown Findlay also embraces and combats the description. She\u2019s notably snappish and bad-tempered \u2013 so might you be, if everyone constantly told you how kind you were \u2013 and her plaid shirts and yanked-back hair are a wardrobe of someone who has decided that practical wallflower is the only option. When she goes for more \u2013 rushing for a hug from her chilly father, hovering lovingly around the visiting doctor \u2013 it\u2019s anguish. Everyone notes her kind heart, but no one will meet it with kindness of their own. What\u2019s the point of warmth without reciprocation?<\/p>\n

The men they hoped they’d never be<\/strong><\/p>\n

As for Paul Rhys and Tobias Menzies (pictured top by Manuel Harlan) as Vanya\/Johnny and Astrov\/Michael \u2013 each seems to have become the man they hoped they’d never be. Menzies\u2019 doctor is a visitor. Wherever he is, he\u2019s just passing through. He maintains a commentary of subvocal murmurs, winces and shrugs, always with the reaction shot, never wholly in the room. No wonder he doesn\u2019t notice Sonya\u2019s devotion. Late at night, drunk as a skunk, he pulls off his shirt and dances to Bowie with a whole-hearted disconnection from his own body: cranking his joints to ungainly angles, summoning soft flesh to slump.<\/p>\n

And Rhys: longtime a tortured angel of an actor, now crumpled and human like the rest of us. Again, you couldn\u2019t predict his choices. The way his Johnny tries to go a-wooing but his\u00a0inner satnav takes a wrong turning from Hugh Grant winsome to beyond fey: titters, arch deprecations, a bunch of blushing roses held stiffly as a gift but more convincingly mobile when weaponised against the sofa. His hurt is ugly, his pain is ridiculous. Which just makes it all the more painful. And how does Rhys make his pale face so blotchy under pressure? Even his blood vessels are method.<\/p>\n

These performances make perfect sense but you could never blueprint them in advance. They hit home, but provide their own commentary. They aren\u2019t glamorous, but replete with humanity they\u2019re incredibly beautiful.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You might think someone who had spent a hefty proportion of their evenings in the theatre, at the movies, in front of TV dramas or news broadcasts of politicians might have a few ideas of what acting is about. But, like many audience members, I still consider it a little bit of magic. The alchemy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[260,104,127,175,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-acting","9":"tag-almeida","10":"tag-chekhov","11":"tag-robert-icke","12":"tag-theatre","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1255"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1260,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions\/1260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}