Did Jeremy Brett really learnt Meyerhold’s system?wytchcroftJanuary 24 2009, 20:51:05 UTC
HA HA HA! provoking eh?
But not so far from the truth - Brett was interested in dance and kinetic movement all his life, and during his actor training of course,... but also somethign of the auto didact, blending an interest in Budhism to the kinds of movement with a sort of lineage from Isadora Duncan.
As for his mannerisms, they are fascinating to me because on the one hand, he had such intense 'method' actign that he BECAME Holmes (his version of course) and took Holmes back home (like David Bowie wth Ziggy Stardust) which is always a dangerous thing for an actor to do. And yet this intense internalised charatcter is also 'large' and theatrical in a Victorian manner, and quite out of step with acting styles of the 1980s.
All of which must be weighed against the fact that physicaly he was in many cases reproducing directly either Doyle's prose description or Paget's illustrations - for example crawling on the floor or sitting in a Lotus position surrounded by papers.
I do believe that he found a very valid centre to Holmes as a breathing individual.
But just as Hamlet has had both Olivier and Gielgud and Fiennes etc reinterpret the role with both acclaim so too with Brett, Livanov, Cushing etc.
I do not choose one over the other from these as they ALL have no only good actors but the role they create is living and three dimensional. Pravda, in each case. Even a performance that is removed in some ways from Doyle - such as Plummer, again it is convincing.
Where the charatcer is lost or lies undiscovered (such as is far more often the caese with Watson on film and TV) then I will be critical. Roxburgh for example, a cypher.
Thank you for reading this piece and for commenting in such an interesting fashion:):)
But not so far from the truth - Brett was interested in dance and kinetic movement all his life, and during his actor training of course,... but also somethign of the auto didact, blending an interest in Budhism to the kinds of movement with a sort of lineage from Isadora Duncan.
As for his mannerisms, they are fascinating to me because on the one hand, he had such intense 'method' actign that he BECAME Holmes (his version of course) and took Holmes back home (like David Bowie wth Ziggy Stardust) which is always a dangerous thing for an actor to do. And yet this intense internalised charatcter is also 'large' and theatrical in a Victorian manner, and quite out of step with acting styles of the 1980s.
All of which must be weighed against the fact that physicaly he was in many cases reproducing directly either Doyle's prose description or Paget's illustrations - for example crawling on the floor or sitting in a Lotus position surrounded by papers.
I do believe that he found a very valid centre to Holmes as a breathing individual.
But just as Hamlet has had both Olivier and Gielgud and Fiennes etc reinterpret the role with both acclaim so too with Brett, Livanov, Cushing etc.
I do not choose one over the other from these as they ALL have no only good actors but the role they create is living and three dimensional. Pravda, in each case. Even a performance that is removed in some ways from Doyle - such as Plummer, again it is convincing.
Where the charatcer is lost or lies undiscovered (such as is far more often the caese with Watson on film and TV) then I will be critical. Roxburgh for example, a cypher.
Thank you for reading this piece and for commenting in such an interesting fashion:):)
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