if I see Shakespeare delivered in anything other than cut-glass Received Pronunciation I always have to work hard to get over my instinctive feeling that something's not right.
I prefer that actors use their own accent rather than putting one on, unless there's a reason in the text of the play for them to do otherwise. And as someone remarked in that thread you pointed me to, it makes very little sense for an actor playing a Roman to put on a British! I enjoy hearing Shakespeare in an American accent, actually -- I like what it does to the rhythms.
In the production of Julius Caesar we've been discussing, most of the actors were Americans, and they used their own accents, which worked fine for me. The actor playing Antony, however, was British, and he used his own accent too -- not RP, but something more "common" sounding. (Sorry, I don't know how else to describe it.) Now that I think about it, that may have contributed to my impression that he wasn't quite gelling with the other actors.
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Re: More Unashamed Cassius Fangirl Squee
Date: 2003-08-23 08:36 pm (UTC)I prefer that actors use their own accent rather than putting one on, unless there's a reason in the text of the play for them to do otherwise. And as someone remarked in that thread you pointed me to, it makes very little sense for an actor playing a Roman to put on a British! I enjoy hearing Shakespeare in an American accent, actually -- I like what it does to the rhythms.
In the production of Julius Caesar we've been discussing, most of the actors were Americans, and they used their own accents, which worked fine for me. The actor playing Antony, however, was British, and he used his own accent too -- not RP, but something more "common" sounding. (Sorry, I don't know how else to describe it.) Now that I think about it, that may have contributed to my impression that he wasn't quite gelling with the other actors.