Language is everything

Watching the Shakespeare masterclass by distinguished voice coach Patsy Rodenburg at MITP, Valletta was as illuminating as it was entertaining.

Rodenburg quite clearly has vast experience of coaching actors – Shakespearean actors in particular – and makes sure she impresses her audience with her name-dropping and amusing anecdotes of her experiences with actors.

She came back again and again to her experiences of coaching at the dreaded Broadmoor, Britain’s prison for the criminally insane. Her most amusingly dreadful, or dreadfully amusing, tale was about coaching some prisoners to act Othello’s murder of Desdemona. She was told authoritatively and critically by one of the prisoners – a convicted murderer – that “it [smothering to death] takes longer [than the stage action had allowed]”.

She has undoubtedly a deep and vast knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays, and said she has even directed one of the plays done least, Titus Andronicus.

She strongly believes that unless actors give great attention to each word they have to speak, as well as to the logical and psychological connections between the various parts of a speech, failure is inevitable.

Her most valuable direction, I suspect, is to lay great emphasis on being specific. Thus, Viola’s speech after having received a ring from Olivia (Twelfth Night) becomes more effective if Viola is shown to perceive how immensely valuable the ring is, and a speech by Goneril (King Lear) early in the play hinges much on the speaking of the words “I’ll not endure it” as indicating a crucial psychological moment when a daughter discovers she can finally stand up to the father she has always feared so much.

Another important direction was to make the words produce the dramatic effect, and not to make gestures usurp the place of expressive language.

Those who stood up to deliver speeches (some read them, and they were always less effective) ranged from 20-year olds having some talent but little experience to seasoned performers whom I shall not mention by name.

Most impressive was an actress who has performed in Shakespeare many a time, who delivered Viola’s “Disguise I see thou art a wickedness” with much freshness and with an attention to projection and audibility two other seniors did not have.

Rodenburg showed her interest in the performance by devoting much attention to matters of specificity and pauses between sentences or phrases, but it was the one speech where her direction made only a marginal difference to what was already a well-thought and well-delivered speech.

Another experienced actress had not prepared just as well a speech from Othello spoken by Emilia to Desdemona in the last act. Like most of the other participants she was pulled up for neglecting the musicality of the iambic pentameter, but Rodenburg’s detailed remarks, and especially her reminding her and us how ill-used Emilia was by her husband Iago, made this actress’s later versions of the speech much more effective.

Another greatly experienced and much admired actor again took some time to find the strength and malignancy of a speech by Iago, but when he did, it was great.

The young actors had a go at Goneril, Lady Macbeth and Hamlet. The actor who tried the great “To be, or not to be” speech went through it without paying the deep attention the ideas behind it require, but Rodenburg’s comments led to much improvement in later attempts.

At one point a well-known veteran actor stood up uninvited but was allowed to recite sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”) which he gallantly addressed to Rodenburg, and gave his version of “To be or not to be”. He did not ask for or receive Rodenburg’s comments.

Masquerade should bring over more stage tutors of the high calibre shown by Rodenburg.