Shakespeare’s American Accent

Sir Peter Hall, among the foremost theater and opera directors in the world, is best known for his Shakespeare productions. Hall recently suggested in an article in the Spectator that American speech is richer for Shakespeare than modern British speech, and he wants to prove it in Los Angeles. Based in London, Hall is in town completing auditions for productions of “Measure for Measure” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which he will direct in repertory at the Ahmanson Theatre, opening June 20. Calendar invited him to share his thoughts on the process.

I have always wanted to do some thoroughly American Shakespeare. And now my chance has come, thanks to Gordon Davidson and the Ahmanson Theatre. Transatlantic vowels are more melodic and rich, closer to Elizabethan, than the gray, clipped, modern speech of the Brits. The problem is the form. American actors, confronted by Shakespeare, either jump into mid-Atlantic and speak constrained and improbable “English” or they scratch-and-feel their way into emotional Method Shakespeare, proud of chopping up the verse into “real” gobbets that are incomprehensible to the audience and a threat to their own vocal cords. It is only a question of breathing. Breathe in the wrong place and the text is incomprehensible and control is lost. Breathe in the right place (though it will almost certainly not be “natural”) and it will make the line of the verse sustainable. Direct communication becomes possible--and communication is after all why Shakespeare bothered to write in iambic lines. The greatest compliment I have ever overheard was at my production of “The Merchant of Venice” on Broadway. “Of course it has been modernized,” said the woman crossly to her companion. “I can understand it.”

American actors have plenty of temperament. They have a great sense of rhythm and musicality. They can be superb in Shakespeare--I know, because I have seen it. But I have never seen a group of American actors play a production in the same style. I have spent most of the last two months in New York and Los Angeles auditioning, conducting a couple of master classes in Shakespeare and taking stock. The enthusiasm of the actors is boundless. They are open, bold and perfectly willing to make fools of themselves. Many of them, after three days, are speaking the verse trippingly on the tongue, with as much delight as Judi Dench or Ian Holm. (Who are they? Expert Shakespeareans whom I have worked with all my professional life.)

I made contact with a wonderful group of American actors--some of them old friends, some of them new: Ed Harris, Kevin Kline, John Lithgow, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman, David Dukes, Nathan Lane, Helen Hunt, Kelly McGillis, Gwyneth Paltrow, Minnie Driver and many more. (Note to their agents: The billing is haphazard.)

They were all keen to work on Shakespeare; they were all indeed keen to get back to the stage. But most of them couldn’t do it. They had to wait--wait until their movie was “green-lighted” or their TV pilot was elevated into a series. In L.A., it seems, actors wait--not because they are resting but because they are hoping. The place has probably the biggest pool of talented actors in the world, but they are there not to act but to wait--in case the TV or the movie calls. Theater cannot figure in their calculations except (briefly) on the way up, or perhaps even more briefly on the way down. Some of the actors asked politely toward the end of the meeting if I hadn’t been told that they were not free. “Then why on earth did you come?” I would ask. “I thought it would be interesting to meet you,” was the reply. Flattering, but hardly any help in setting up a Shakespeare company.

Hollywood is a state of mind that measures talent strictly by dollar potential; it can measure how hot you are to the last cent, and its audiences tend to be as sensitive to this as the agents and producers. L.A., it seems to me, is a town still searching to define itself as a city. Even with “Shakespeare in Love” wowing the place, there is a certain anxiety about Shakespeare. Is there real money in him? How will the film do in Topeka, Kan.?

The agents don’t like theater because they want their clients to be ever free for the screen. Some agents would not even let their major clients come to meet me unless there was already an offer on the table. I said that it didn’t seem reasonable to make an offer without meeting the artist. I wasn’t going to submit them to an audition, but surely it would be wise to see if we both got on? No, this ignorant foreigner invariably lost.

But there were some exceptions. Kelly McGillis, when she discovered that I was really keen to meet her, jumped on a plane to London and read Titania with wonderful abandon. Where she led, others followed.

I was told that I should keep my nerve and cast right up to the last moment. This I have done. So there are some superb actors in my group--Richard Thomas, David Dukes and Brian Murray among them.

Many other actors say they will come next year, if I do another season. In a sense, this is my pilot. I am doing two plays about the ravages of lust--one comic, one serious: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Measure for Measure”--no, not in the Oval Office. Next season, we would like to move on to the tragedies, Gordon Davidson has a passion to go on with this Shakespeare program. So I am grateful to him and for the challenge of America.

I have worked, over the years, with many great American actors. Some of them were foreigners who had become American--Charles Laughton and Jessica Tandy among them. Some were not first and foremost English speakers--Raul Julia. Some were as American as can be--like Jessica Lange, Kim Stanley, Rod Steiger or Roy Scheider. All of them--whether they were native or not--had a fantastic emotional range and a depth of feeling that could lead them to the brink of sentimentality or, at the best, into an emotional potency which would embarrass the average English actor.

If that emotion can be allied to a respect for the form of Shakespeare, then the stage will be alight. (And after all, the speaking of Shakespeare is no different a discipline to the learning of a song; finally the actor has to make it his own to make it sound natural, however formal it may be.)

I remember when I was doing “The Merchant of Venice” with Dustin Hoffman as Shylock, he tried everything to apply the Method to the verse and to make understanding lead him to the form. Then one day he came to rehearsal and said, “Hey, I have just realized something. You can’t improvise this [expletive].” Well, you can’t, but you can make it burn with passion. He ended up as the best Shylock I’ve ever seen. And that is why I am looking forward to my American adventure.