We all know that ‘villains’ are more interesting if they seem attractive at first, but how far can actors go with that? In this play EDMUND, REGAN and GONERIL appear to be villains from the start, but is it possible for them to seem the complete opposite? Can a clever actor find an excuse – which Shakespeare intends – for everything they say?
Shakespeare is too smart to want his characters to ever be ‘obvious’. And another reason for not letting them be obvious villains is that it makes the characters around them look very stupid for not noticing!
And if we study Shakespeare’s lines carefully, we can usually find hidden depths, and – if we are suited to the part – discover we have the character inside us.
Actors don’t need an acting coach, like me, to help them work out what Shakespeare’s lines mean, they only have to look at the lines like an FBI detective. There are secrets – some hidden deeply – everywhere in Shakespeare. And just as the serial-killer Ted Bundy did not believe he was evil, we may find that everything EDMUND says and does is quite justified. His childhood must have been a nightmare – with his father openly preferring another son. And the two older daughters of King Lear are equally disrespected by their father in public! So we should search for all the lines which help us sympathize with them.
And it is only because I have been an actor for so long, and worked with five actors who were knighted for doing their job, – one of them made a ‘Lord’ so you can guess who I may mean, – have I seen moments when Shakespeare was ‘found’! Working with some of the world’s leading actors, at their best, was like watching Apollo 7 take off . Their energy, their unending commitment, their endless study and daily preparation, is what makes Shakespeare productions – very rarely – ‘take off’.
There are a few American film stars who work in this insanely dedicated way, never letting on how much work they do before every performance, and their dedication to work remains a secret. But I’ve also worked with famous actors who completely failed to discover what most of Shakespeare’s lines mean, maybe thinking about their next film , or bullied by a director who knew even less than they did. So my point is that we either need to find people to help us whom we can totally, completely trust, or work night and day on parts like these on our own.
I have – quite a few times – coached some actors the wrong way, encouraging them to try humor and laughter in scenes about jealousy and murder, when they needed to play their lines more aggressively, so I have failed to see for hours sometimes just what could make a role ‘suit’ them. But then, sometimes at the last minute of a session the true depth of a character has jumped out. And it is easy to want to push young actors too much, to rush them, but most actors can discover their own ‘surprises’ in a Shakespeare role, by simply working harder than they have ever done before.
Shakespeare gives actors the chance – in our very best performances – maybe only four or five evenings in our whole lives, to play roles well that are “‘GREAT”. The mixture of goodness and evil in Shakespeare is not found anywhere else.
There may be moments of genuine laughter between Macbeth and his wife when they discuss killing Duncan, astonished that they trust each other so much. Poor Juliet may be crying her heart out, during and after her scenes with the murdering Romeo.
Finding depth is the aim of ‘great’ actors. The depth is there to be found. The language is more complicated Chekhov’s (who was mad), more wise than Tennessee Williams’s (who knew next to nothing about women), and more modern than Arthur Miller (whose plays are about social issues which are well known to every child in the world over ten.) William S just needs harder work.
