A
clipping* from a Hilton Als review in The
New Yorker has been sitting on my computer desk for a long time. It’s a
theatre review titled “Frozen” about a revival of The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill. It’s from the May 7, 2018
issue, but it hasn’t been sitting by my desk that long—only since my mom passed several issues along to me to read before recycling. I was struck
by Als’s reverence for one young actor’s fine acting.
Als
describes the kind of acting I like to see, I hope do, and, when I teach or direct, try to encourage or inspire…or at least explain. Sometimes I try to describe it via difference, or, to put it in a
dramatic conflict form, as Acting vs Performing. Some actors are mainly performers—maybe
with great skill and panache—but still “acting,” not acting, still performing. They may prefer performing
to acting, it may feel more fun and/or more secure; it may seem to get them
more jobs, since it’s a way of calling attention to themselves, and sometimes
audiences don’t really see the difference. But many audience members do, and
some directors do, and other actors, and critics like this one. Here, praising
Austin Butler, Hilton Als beautifully explains the acting vs performing thing:
Most performers want to
be seen at any cost, but actors—at least those as good as Butler—are both
determined and relaxed in their ambition to do justice to the playwright’s text
while contributing to the life of the story. Butler, making his Broadway debut... illustrates,
the moment he takes the stage, the difference between the two. …[H]e conveys,
through economy of movement and facial expression, what many of his cast-mates
try to show by shouting and grandstanding: his character’s inner life.
I
loved the little moment during the Golden Globes last night when Fleabag writer and actor Phoebe
Waller-Bridge made fun of herself while praising her director even though she
was the writer and thought a scene was meant to go a certain way. How lovely
that she could try a little harder and see another way of making it work!
Here
is Hilton Als again on the issue, still in the context of The Iceman Cometh:
It’s always a pity when
an actor cynically sticks to what he knows will work and leaves it at that.
It’s an ungenerous impulse not to try harder than one has to, and it pinches
the spectator’s heart. But Butler is the opposite of cynical. He wants to do
right by O’Neill, his director, and his fellow-players. And, no matter how much
they bray around him, he stands his ground, reacting to what may be pure in
them, as performers, with his own purity, the wellspring of his work, which is
that of a potentially great artist.
Real
acting gets real respect.
*And
now I can recycle the clipping!
