The Tragedian Trilogy

I love my craft of acting. Yesterday (sunday may 3rd 2009) on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Brighton I was reminded of why i pursue this craft. I and some 150 others were witness to a trilogy telling the life of Edmund Kean. His rise to fame, his fall to infamy, and his decline to legend.

This tour-de-force of focused concentration incorporated every aspect of theatre and as such this review is not about the actor, Alister O’Loughlin, who played it. No matter then you may never have heard of him.

His subject Edmund Kean you may have heard of, if not pursue the link above. His performance lasted some 3 and a half hours with breaks after 1 hour 20, 50 minutes, and a final 1 hour ten.

Fortunately the narrative supersedes discomfort and Kean’s fascinating life unveils like a turbulent rockstar’s biography in a sunday paper supplement.

Kean was above all a craftsman and did nothing on stage by chance. His training took form from a childhood doing tumbling acrobatics and reciting Shakespeare in taverns for pennies and gin to his years of touring in the provinces with his wife and 2 boys. His eldest and favourite, Howard died young as a result of the hardships of touring life.

His coming out at Drury Lane, London age 26 broke with the tradition portraying Shylock, discarding the Jew’s usual red wig and beard,
was a sensation. A star was born.

The story of his public rise and fall went hand-in-hand with his own failings; namely dependence on drink as bohemian fuel and insatiable adulterous and cuckolding womanising. The media of the time, which then as now thrived on scandal, hounded him. Society accepted and rejected him.

Escaping their calumnies Kean toured America to similar acclaim and disapproval. But all this is mere biography and what impressed me was the art and artifice on which his acting was built.

Sunday was remarkable in that the set was on the stage of the theatre royal, chairs in a quadrangle, above the ropes and flies of a much beloved landmark theatre, to my left the auditorium 3 tiered, plush red. A silent reminder and witness to what is essentially an actor’s tale happening fully contained onstage.

Kean plotted a physical, vocal and emotional score for his characters. Alister as Kean has done the same. He pushes an actor’s trunk filled with various props around the stage. He employs audience members in the front rows as characters Kean knew, loved, loathed or reviled. All done with a lightness of touch that offence, embarassment, or unwillingness couldn’t arise.

The loss of Kean’s son forms a touching leitmotif throughout the 3 parts. But as with the whole score nothing is dwelt upon merely passes by as in a dream, a fiction. Kean’s other son, Charles became a celebrated actor in his own right. Hanging in the dressing room backstage are original posters advertising his Shakespearean performances at this very theatre.

The appeal to me was the totality of this experience. An actor’s life steeped in the great roles of Shakespeare. The reminder that theatre is always rehearsed spontaneity. And that skillfully done, can touch the hearts and minds of an audience.

Especially when you are thinking 3 and half hours, one man, and are least prepared for it. Hours passed by in moments of rapt attention, which made it as the programme said, ‘immediate, truthful, and relevant’.

I started acting after working lights on a 30 day run of Krapp’s Last Tape in the Stalhouderij, then the smallest theatre in the Netherlands. A 50 year old english actor called Robert made that play live, to audiences from 5 to 15 in this converted old stable, which could hold no more.

The curtain barely kept out the wind and my light cues were simply on and off. Each night in the bar upstairs, actor and bohemian audience would pick apart the text and subtext and honour the reason we do it in the first place: the telling of a good story.

Robert is dead now, as is Kean. But we still live and the stars still shine. And Alister is the Bosola to the puppet master Cardinal. And tonight we get two more chances to improve our storytelling.