Friday 7 December 2012

On Acting - Laurence Olivier

As if to act as an antidote to Emma's disdain for the theatre, in Margaret Drabble's The Garrick Year, I have just finished reading Laurence Olivier's On Acting (1986), lent to me by my friend Andrea.  Nobody could accuse Olivier of disdaining the theatre - indeed, his adulation for it far exceeds mine, and he has (of course) a much more experienced and wise eye to cast over it.

I was a little unsure about reading On Acting, because I'm not a huge fan of Olivier (he falls into the Kenneth Branagh category of just-too-actory for me) and thought it was his autobiography - but it turns out that he'd already published his autobiography, Confessions of an Actor, and this volume instead focused on the craft of the actor, particularly on playing Shakespeare on stage and screen.  Perfect!

Olivier starts off with a brief history of great actors of the past - Burbage, Kean et al - which isn't a very auspicious start to the book.  As I discovered throughout the book, Olivier delivers anecdotes appallingly.  In this section, he often suffixes them with the acknowledgement that they're probably false - and somehow he mismanages each anecdote so that it falls oddly flat.  I began to worry.  But once Olivier started writing about the craftsmanship of acting, he got much, much better.  The largest section of On Acting concerns various significant roles in Shakespeare, devoting a chapter to each.  Olivier writes of Hamlet, Othello, Richard III and more, with firsthand insight into playing the roles, and explaining how he developed and discovered the characters.  This stuff is like catnip to me.  Olivier's exploration of these characters is attached to specific performances and is very personal, it cannot and does not claim to be objective literary criticism, but it's fascinating.

How I love to read actors' theories about the theatre!  Olivier does not skimp on this.  Here's an excerpt I loved:
To achieve true theatre, you can't have one man up front and the acolytes with their backs to the audience feeding the great star with lines as dull as dishwater.  What you must have is every character believing in himself and, therefore, contributing to the piece as a whole, placing and pushing the play in the right direction.  The third spear carrier on the left should believe that the play is all about the third spear carrier on the left.  I've always believed that.  If the character is nameless, the actor should give himself a name.  He should give himself a family, a background, a past.  Where was he born, what did he have for breakfast?  Perhaps he had troubles at home, perhaps his wife has left him, perhaps his wife has just presented him with a new baby, perhaps he is saving for something - and so on.  If the actor brings on with him a true belief in himself, we should be able to look at him at any moment during the action and see a complete three-dimensional figure and not a cardboard cut-out.  To transport an audience, they must see life and not paste.
It is, though, one of the few times that he acknowledges the need for a united company.  One of the things that did irk me in On Acting is the isolation in which Olivier prepares his roles - there seemed no sense that other actors' decision might affect his performances, or even that he was aware of them.  He is also monumentally egotistical (he claims all actors must be) and often congratulates himself on brilliant work - which is perhaps the prerogative of the aging actor, looking back over a long and successful career.  When writing about film, he is a little less self-confident, and I gained a lot of respect for Olivier when he acknowledged the failings of his version of Pride and Prejudice:
I was very unhappy with the picture.  It was difficult to make Darcy into anything more than an unattractive-looking prig, and darling Greer seemed to me all wrong as Elizabeth.  To me, Jane Austen had made Elizabeth different from her affected, idiotic sister; she was the only down-to-earth one, but Greer played her as the most affected and silly of the lot.  I also thought that the best points in the book were missed, although apparently no one else did.
You're not alone, Olivier!  I didn't think it worked at all...

This isn't the place to come if you want gossip about Olivier's life.  Perhaps Confessions of an Actor has that, but I rather imagine it doesn't.  On Acting isn't just for the aspiring actor, either - goodness knows I have no ambitions in that direction - but it is a fascinating look behind the red curtain, and an authoritative examination of the acting profession.  Coming at it from another direction, it has unusual and interesting readings of Shakespeare's plays.  Olivier is not a very gifted writer, although a mostly competent one, but his acting talent and vast experience excuse his mediocrity in that regard - and make On Acting a very engaging read.  It would seem an inexcusable boast from most actors, to cover so broad a topic as acting, but somehow Laurence Olivier seems (and certainly believes himself to be) the man allowed to do it.

6 comments:

  1. I was rather glad to see your comparison between Olivier and Branagh (too actory) because I agree, though Ken B has I think improved immeasurably lately -- and of course was wonderful as Olivier in the Marilyn film this year. But I do think Olivier was prone to going over the top -- there was a great (though racist by today's standards) comment on him in the Gielgud book I reviewed recently about him playing Malvolio "like a Jewish hairdresser" and insisting on falling off a garden bench even though Gielgud begged him not to. At his best he was brilliant though and I was lucky enough to see him in Osborne's The Entertainer -- unforgettable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lucky indeed! I don't know if you've read this book, Harriet, but he devotes a paragraph or two to praising your father.

      Delete
    2. I remember seeing Henry V with a friend (Branagh version) We walked out of the cinema, looked at each other and said, "Olivier who?"

      Delete
    3. Harriet yes I would have loved to have seen Olivier on stage in the Entertainer. I have the film version on DVD. I believe LO thought that this part was one of his most enjoyable. He must have found it quite daunting to learn to sing and dance but he did sing in the Devil's opera film with Dorothy Tutin. Who I think played his daughter in the original production at the Royal court theatre before Joan Plowright.

      Delete
  2. I have read Olivier's book on acting and I found it a great read very enlightening his life as an actor he brought to life in his book I think. How he got to grips with his famous Shakespearean roles and his famous films like Henry V Richard 111 and Hamlet. I am a fan of Laurence Olivier as he introduced me to Shakespeare through his film of Richard 111. I think that as an actor he was like a chameleon he could change his whole persona to suit the part he was playing. I have also read his confessions of an actor which was I think more to do with his private life not just his acting prowess. A great actor sadly missed by myself as he brought me a great amount of pleasure through his acting.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes I agree somewhat with the previous comment from Anonymous Olivier was an actor of great diversity. But I am going to bring up the issue of Olivier's Othello. I was given in 1965 or 66 a ticket to see this production at the Old Vic which was the nucleus of the then embolic National Theatre I think I am right in saying. Olivier played the Moor very black and managed to lower his voice to sound more black. As his voice I think was naturally much higher. He did get some stick from some of the critics who said that he was like a west Indian bus conductor on a bad day. Of course then issue of race and blacking up was mentioned.I have seen Anthony Hopkins as Othello in a BBC production made in the 1980's and his Othello was much lighter and not so manic as Olivier's. Some critics said Olivier's Othello was to manic and his gestures over the top and that took away the audiences attention regarding Shakespeare's verse. I have read Olivier's book on acting and I to found it very interesting and yes Anonymous is correct I think he did bring much pleasure to many people through his acting for many years a one off I don't think his like will be seen again in my opinion.

    ReplyDelete

I've now moved to www.stuckinabook.com, and all my old posts are over there too - do come and say hello :)

I probably won't see your comment here, I'm afraid, but all my archive posts can also be found at www.stuckinabook.com.