FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W3199465862> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W3199465862 endingPage "140" @default.
• W3199465862 startingPage "129" @default.
• W3199465862 abstract "American actor Kevin Kline’s success has been built on an iconoclastic personalityin a nation that historically follows fashion and has been ruled by market forces. Hehas managed to maintain a film career as a top box office draw playing dashingleading men, primarily in the high comedy genre, while simultaneously dedicatinghimself to performing the great roles of the classical repertoire on stage. He hasplayed Hamlet twice, Richard III, Henry V, Lear and Falstaff and has brought hisclassical acting reputation to the screen playing Bottom and Jacques in popular filmadaptations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It.Class distinctions have long divided American audiences. A stigma of elitism hasbeen attached to any actor who seems to emulate British style, and cinema-influencednatural delivery and behaviour have served as indicators of unaffected, Americanstyle performance. Linguistic idiosyncrasies, actor training and native repertoire haveall conspired to inhibit the development of first rate classical actors in the USA,leaving Kline to give great performances in less great productions. When Americanactors seemed to get verse reading right they appeared false, but if they played intheir native dialect they seemed out of tune with the text.Kline’s Hamlet in 1990 was one of those rare moments in American theatre whena contemporary sensibility and aggressively modern technique combine in an actorwho commands both mass audience appeal and respect for Shakespeare’s poeticvision. It was the second time he played the role, and by directing the productionhimself he hoped to focus the interpretation more clearly, replacing directorialflourishes with simplicity of presentation and clarity in vocal delivery. During aninterview I had with him in 2010 (from which all otherwise unattributed quotes hereare taken), Kline reflected on his approach to staging the play. He told set designerRobin Wagner to give him ‘a bare stage with only the minimal bits of furniture-andthen get rid of those too’. He described his directorial style as ‘old-fashioned actormanagement’ in which he surrounded himself with like-minded actors who wanted tofocus on the words; he told them ‘we don’t need a director, we can do this ourselves’.This Hamlet was a test case of sorts for the limits of the American realist traditionof acting in Shakespeare. From Kline’s first entrance, his Hamlet was an emotionalwreck. His intensity of feeling was so strong that even in repose, when listening toanother actor’s lines, he seemed on the edge of a breakdown. No sooner had hespoken the lines ‘the fruitful river of the eye’ to Gertrude in the wedding scene, thanhis eyes began to brim with tears. There was no scene in the play where he backedaway from the emotional commitment of that first image of mourning, guilt andresentment, drawing from the fruitful river of tears again and again to build a complexset of emotional extremes.It was a remarkably brave performance in which his psyche seemed laid bare. Ifaudiences rejected this Hamlet they rejected the emotional life of the actor himself.Even in scenes where Kline used his considerable comic talent to great effect, Hamlet’sfragility and suicidal depression remained on display. Indeed, the comic moments,such as when engaging with Polonius over double meanings of words or parryingClaudius’s queries about the whereabouts of Polonius’s dead body, maintained theantic disposition of clinically observable manic-depressives. It was an interpretationrooted in mental instability: not the cliche, literary madness of gothic novels orreceived notions of the renaissance world view, but rather the kind of depressionthat most of the audience would recognise and have some personal experience of asindividuals. He was a tangible, convincingly distraught Hamlet whose sufferingseemed familiar despite his princely status and introspective poetic tangents.Kline’s strategy to create a constantly suffering central character demanded theaudience’s empathy. This was a marked contrast from his first performance ofHamlet directed by Liviu Ciulei. In that version Kline had decided he wanted to playeach soliloquy in a ‘presentational style, directly addressing the audience’. Later hewas studying production stills of himself delivering some of the big speeches, and hethought it looked as if he was lecturing the audience. He became convinced that‘explaining the words rather than saying them’ had cut the audience off from the innerlife of the character. When he remounted the play, his approach to the soliloquies wasradically altered and it affected the entire performance.This was not a dry, self-centred, intellectual Hamlet. He was a sensitive, passionate,wronged man whose damaged greatness was the core of the tragedy. AlthoughKline’s performance was consistent with an American tradition of intense emotionalcommitment to character, it was also technically very precise. His approach to the‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy was almost akin to a textbook reading of the lines asmetre, except that the tone was so hushed and steeped in stream-of-consciousnessthat the audience had to lean forward to make sure they could hear the over-familiarwords. He entered entirely into his own thoughts, with no awareness of Claudiusand Polonius in the previous scene or Ophelia’s proximity in the next. No doubtwas left that this was a genuine consideration of suicide as an option, with sorrow atthe realisation that he didn’t have the courage to take that step. He shared both partsof this pain with the audience, the despair followed by the frustration, equally. Histears of release on ‘to die, to sleep’ were almost enough to make one forget rhetoricand believe that suicide was a good choice, while his realisation that suicide had noguarantee of release seemed so spontaneous that a sensitive viewer almost felt guiltyfor being privy to such private confessions.It is always a problem for actors to create the illusion that they do not know whatthey will say next or what thought will come next, but in set pieces like ‘To be ornot to be’ where the audience also knows the lines, delivering a spontaneous readingis even more difficult. Kline’s preparation for Hamlet focused almost exclusively onthe problem of spontaneity. He wanted to avoid a pre-meditated or scheming qualityin each of his readings and reactions. Above all he wanted his Hamlet to be freshand to appear as if each moment genuinely followed upon the last. Where anotheractor might be tempted to ‘kick the ball ahead of him’ as Joan Littlewood used tocomplain, Kline obsessively guarded against such strategising in rehearsal, concentratingon each individual beat as complete and independent. His approach was centred onthe words and the effect the words had on him in rehearsal. By moving from wordto word and religiously avoiding generalities or preconceptions, trusting his personalreactions to the text, he was confident that he could appear as a present and livingcharacter as opposed to satisfying a given interpretation. In fact he consciouslyavoided specific interpretive notions based on the Oedipal complex or ‘Hamlet asan intellectual and therefore unable to make decisions or act impulsively’ (Guskin2003: 155).Kline performed an elaborate pantomime with his knife as he seemed about toseize the moment to kill Claudius at prayer. As he had done in the ‘To be or not tobe’ soliloquy, he managed to externalise interior monologue, in this case addingphysical action by encroaching dangerously on Claudius’s space and threatening hisear with the point of his blade. In the closet scene with Gertrude, he balancedextreme physical action, throwing her across the stage and wrenching back her head,with equally compelling images of a child who seemed to want to nestle at hismother’s breast. At his most violent, Kline’s Hamlet never lost the audience’s sympathybecause his rash acts never seemed part of a generalised plan.Throughout his performance, Kline cleverly balanced Hamlet’s tendency to ana-lyse and intellectualise with scenes of open-hearted guilelessness. Hamlet’s treatmentof Ophelia can create a barrier for the audience’s compassion if he seems to privilegehis suffering by belittling her feelings. When Ophelia entered after the soliloquy inAct III, i, Hamlet approached her with unguarded love and ingenuous affection.Kline made it clear that it was only after she delivers an incriminating line reading on‘I have remembrances of yours, that I have longed long to redeliver’ that he turnedfrom welcoming lover to betrayed one. A similar strategy was used for Hamlet’s firstinteraction with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Kline, who emphasised Hamlet’sinsomnia throughout the play, was sleeping when they entered and startled him intowakefulness, whereupon he spontaneously expressed his love and affection for histwo friends. Only much later in the scene did he start to play a suspicious characterwith superior wit calculating how to foil their treachery. This Hamlet was only cruelwhen circumstances conspired to bring out that side of his character.The balance between honest soul and intellectual schemer had its corollaryin Kline’s use of simple commitment to stage action and manic theatricality.Where Shakespeare has Hamlet enter in Act II scene ii reading a book, Kline enteredactually reading a book; he didn’t pretend to read a book or use a book as apre-meditated prop to catch up Polonius. Yet once the dialogue began and Hamletcalled Polonius a fishmonger, the book was transformed into a prop and eventuallythe pages were torn out, licked and pasted on Polonius’s forehead. At one pointHamlet sat reading, Marcel Marceau style, in a non-existent mime chair, while heturned the pages saying ‘words, words…words’. The artifice of these manicmoments was effective precisely because the initial image of the scene was always sosimple and direct." @default.
• W3199465862 created "2021-09-27" @default.
• W3199465862 creator A5069493792 @default.
• W3199465862 date "2012-05-23" @default.
• W3199465862 modified "2023-09-23" @default.
• W3199465862 title "Kevin Kline: Donald McManus" @default.
• W3199465862 doi "https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203816196-15" @default.
• W3199465862 hasPublicationYear "2012" @default.
• W3199465862 type Work @default.
• W3199465862 sameAs 3199465862 @default.
• W3199465862 citedByCount "0" @default.
• W3199465862 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W3199465862 hasAuthorship W3199465862A5069493792 @default.
• W3199465862 hasConcept C138885662 @default.
• W3199465862 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
• W3199465862 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
• W3199465862 hasConceptScore W3199465862C138885662 @default.
• W3199465862 hasConceptScore W3199465862C142362112 @default.
• W3199465862 hasConceptScore W3199465862C95457728 @default.
• W3199465862 hasLocation W31994658621 @default.
• W3199465862 hasOpenAccess W3199465862 @default.
• W3199465862 hasPrimaryLocation W31994658621 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W1493919917 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W1501826848 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W1966595334 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2000940354 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2046184811 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2090661036 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2096755166 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2312605013 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2323061558 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2331870353 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2332831145 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2334255100 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2339444351 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2477259065 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W255725538 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W255097714 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2602027234 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2607439897 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W2616216954 @default.
• W3199465862 hasRelatedWork W337307047 @default.
• W3199465862 isParatext "false" @default.
• W3199465862 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W3199465862 magId "3199465862" @default.
• W3199465862 workType "article" @default.