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Authors: William Shakespeare
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of delivery, Macready was combining the Romantic and radical techniques of Kean with the more dignified legacy of John Philip Kemble. 11 In particular, Macready appears to have achieved a certain degree of “naturalness” or of “the colloquial” in his acting, without descending to what Coleridge saw in Kean’s acting as the vulgarity of “rapid descents from the hyper-tragic to the infra-colloquial.” 12 Indeed, according to theatrical historian Alan S. Downer, Macready’s style, “refined by science and psychology … underlies the whole tradition of naturalism, of Stanislavsky and his heirs.” 13 Hence, Macready arguably helped establish the modern system of acting, with its emphasis upon unity of design rather than upon episodic set pieces: “If this was due in part to the spirit of the age, it was due in larger part to Macready’s example and practice.” 14
By these standards, and some fifty years after Macready’s pioneeringwork, Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s 1899 revival must have seemed remarkably dated, and distaste for the old-fashioned declamatory style, together with a telling iconoclasm for its famous practitioners, is revealed in at least one contemporary review:
The hysterical grief of Miss Julia Neilson’s Constance seems overdone.… Mrs. Siddons used to shed real tears as Constance—at least so she said; but that was in the sentimental age.… I sometimes think Mrs. Siddons must have been what the Americans call “a holy terror.” 15
Indeed, the part of Constance, which Sarah Siddons so relished because of the emotional range she saw in it, 16 has proved highly problematic for actresses ever since, since to play this role has meant risking the double bind either of being accused of “hysterical grief,” as in Julia Neilson’s case, or of lifeless understatement of the poetic force of the language. In Douglas Seale’s 1957 Stratford production, Joan Miller attempted to play the role with less emphasis on Constance’s ranting tirades and greater depth given to her “latent psychosis.” The result was generally not well received, with the
Daily Telegraph
reviewer remarking, for example, that she “conveyed little more than that she was rather cross.” 17 On the other hand, Susan Engel in Deborah Warner’s 1988 RSC production and Claire Bloom in David Giles’s 1984 BBC production were both apparently successful in rendering Constance acceptable to a late-twentieth-century audience by playing the part relatively calmly, and effectively questioning whether Constance is actually crazed at all. 18 This impression appears to be confirmed by contemporary reviews, so that, for example, Irving Wardle in
The Times
praised Susan Engel for rendering “the almost unplayably formalized rhetoric into living speech.” 19
However, the Giles and the Warner productions shared an important feature: intimacy with the audience. The Giles production, being for television, allows full-face close-up photography and audible amplification of quiet delivery. Similarly, The Other Place, where Warner mounted her live production, was the smallest and most intimate of all of the RSC’s Stratford theaters of the time, and allowed only a tiny audience, which was forced to sit in close proximity to the actors. This suggests that playing Constance successfully in a more restrained fashion accessible to a modern audience requires such intimacy.
1. 1957, Douglas Seale production. Joan Miller attempted to play the role with less emphasis on Constance’s ranting tirades and greater depth given to her “latent psychosis.”
Of the two 2001 productions, the critical reception of the Northern Broadsides’ Constance suggested that the figure was still notquite at home in the early-twenty-first-century theater, with Charles Spencer in the
Daily Telegraph
opining that Northern Broadsides’ “Marie Louise O’Donnell is so stridently histrionic as the grieving Constance … that she entirely fails to touch the
By these standards, and some fifty years after Macready’s pioneeringwork, Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s 1899 revival must have seemed remarkably dated, and distaste for the old-fashioned declamatory style, together with a telling iconoclasm for its famous practitioners, is revealed in at least one contemporary review:
The hysterical grief of Miss Julia Neilson’s Constance seems overdone.… Mrs. Siddons used to shed real tears as Constance—at least so she said; but that was in the sentimental age.… I sometimes think Mrs. Siddons must have been what the Americans call “a holy terror.” 15
Indeed, the part of Constance, which Sarah Siddons so relished because of the emotional range she saw in it, 16 has proved highly problematic for actresses ever since, since to play this role has meant risking the double bind either of being accused of “hysterical grief,” as in Julia Neilson’s case, or of lifeless understatement of the poetic force of the language. In Douglas Seale’s 1957 Stratford production, Joan Miller attempted to play the role with less emphasis on Constance’s ranting tirades and greater depth given to her “latent psychosis.” The result was generally not well received, with the
Daily Telegraph
reviewer remarking, for example, that she “conveyed little more than that she was rather cross.” 17 On the other hand, Susan Engel in Deborah Warner’s 1988 RSC production and Claire Bloom in David Giles’s 1984 BBC production were both apparently successful in rendering Constance acceptable to a late-twentieth-century audience by playing the part relatively calmly, and effectively questioning whether Constance is actually crazed at all. 18 This impression appears to be confirmed by contemporary reviews, so that, for example, Irving Wardle in
The Times
praised Susan Engel for rendering “the almost unplayably formalized rhetoric into living speech.” 19
However, the Giles and the Warner productions shared an important feature: intimacy with the audience. The Giles production, being for television, allows full-face close-up photography and audible amplification of quiet delivery. Similarly, The Other Place, where Warner mounted her live production, was the smallest and most intimate of all of the RSC’s Stratford theaters of the time, and allowed only a tiny audience, which was forced to sit in close proximity to the actors. This suggests that playing Constance successfully in a more restrained fashion accessible to a modern audience requires such intimacy.
1. 1957, Douglas Seale production. Joan Miller attempted to play the role with less emphasis on Constance’s ranting tirades and greater depth given to her “latent psychosis.”
Of the two 2001 productions, the critical reception of the Northern Broadsides’ Constance suggested that the figure was still notquite at home in the early-twenty-first-century theater, with Charles Spencer in the
Daily Telegraph
opining that Northern Broadsides’ “Marie Louise O’Donnell is so stridently histrionic as the grieving Constance … that she entirely fails to touch the
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