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Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

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#1

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Posted: 9/2/10 at 2:22am

Comment as you will, but I honestly feel this way.

I saw him do Olivia in "Twelfth Night" when the RSC toured in when I was in like, 7th grade - it's stuck with me ever since - and saw him do "Boeing-Boeing" two years ago and thought he was just as, if not moreso, brilliant.

Now, seeing the BWW preview of La Bete, I simply can't wait to see him go crazy yet again. The man is astounding - he manages to be so huge, and "broad" with his comedy, but at the same time, never ever seems forced. Just brilliant.
#2

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Posted: 9/2/10 at 6:36am

I'm here to join your Mark Rylance fan club.

I saw him as Olivia in "Twelfth Night" at the Globe back in 2002 (I think, though I can't believe how long ago that was) and loved him. It's my favourite Shakespeare and I don't think any other performance of it will ever beat that day - leaning on the stage, watching him first get ready through the open side screens and then turn out an amazing performance - sidesplittingly funny in places (charging out from back stage with a pike to point at Viola and Sebastian) and moving in others. With the all male company it was also the first time I've genuinely believed Olivia could've confused Sebastian for Cesario - hell I had trouble telling them apart sometimes!

Went back to the Globe a couple of years later to see him play the lead in Richard II (I only went because he was in it, as I'd studied RII and detested it) and loved his performance (and even enjoyed the play!).

Saw him in Boeing-Boeing before it transferred and he was brilliant - first time I'd seen him do something non Shakespeare and adored it. The whole cast was good, but he just stood out.

And managed to see La Bete last weekend and he stole the show - he was just brilliant (I'm aware I need to find more superlatives) in the role - although Davie Hyde Pierce was very very good, his part is much less showy that Rylance's.

Still cross I didn't manage to see him in Jerusalem - as everyone tells me he was amazing, but tickets (and discounts) were like hen's teeth and I was poor and moving house at the time. My sister saw him in Endgame, but discovered she can't stand Beckett - and not even Rylance's presence could save it. She's off to try La Bete tomorrow night!

I would watch him in anything.
#3

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Posted: 9/2/10 at 10:47am

I would say that Rylance's performance was the problem with Endgame which was otherwise a brilliant production. His John Cleese-like look-at-me schtick changed the very carefully constructed dynamic onstage and overpowered the play.
Faced with these Loreleis, what man can moralize!
#7

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Posted: 9/2/10 at 12:16pm

He gave a truly excellent performance in Jerusalem - I'm not an all-out fan of the play but he acted the roof off.

The only comedy (well, "problem play") I've seen him in was Measure For Measure at the Globe, where I just didn't "get" his performance. His delivery was so strange and halting; it didn't work for me although it was an interesting way of interpreting Shakespeare. But then the play's a bit weird anyway.
#8

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Posted: 9/2/10 at 12:22pm

Damn, I wish JERUSALEM had made it to this side of the pond.

Did you ever see him in the movie ANGELS & INSECTS...very, very sexy in that.
"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” ~ Muhammad Ali
#11

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Posted: 9/2/10 at 1:05pm

"He gave a truly excellent performance in Jerusalem - I'm not an all-out fan of the play but he acted the roof off."

I wasn't the hugest fan of the play either, but his performance was just astounding. The only reason why the play should have transferred.
"...everyone finally shut up, and the audience could enjoy the beginning of the Anatevka Pogram in peace."
#13

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Posted: 9/7/10 at 4:34am

I've just booked my ticket for La Bete this month and I'm so excited to see it.
I managed to see him three times in Jerusalem--first time I'd ever seen him on stage--I loved the play and thought he was incredible in it.
#14

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Posted: 9/7/10 at 7:57am

totally agree. i caught LA BETE when i was in London this summer and that 25 minute scene which is basically a monologue is one of the best moments in the theater that ive ever had the privllege of seeing. He is pure comic genius. Best Actor indeed.

#15

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Posted: 9/7/10 at 10:13am

Even Simon Russell Beale agrees:

It is no great surprise, then, to find out that the 'greatest actor of his generation' label, which is so often attached to him, is not one with which he is at ease. The eye rolling when I mention it begins even before I have finished framing the question. "No. No. No, no, no. No. It's crap. I'm not. I can give you at least two names of people exactly my age who I rate. Mark Rylance and Stephen Dillane. They're great actors. It's fantastically flattering, but it's just not true. If you started believing," he takes a breath, "my God you'd be in trouble."

http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/news/interviews/view/item110149/Simon-Russell-Beale/

If SIMON RUSSELL BEALE thinks you're good, then you're GOOD!

And I agree with Simon. :3
Notes from the Earlham Street Gutter
#17

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Posted: 11/14/10 at 11:25pm

Thought his thread could use a bump since this was up on the Times Arts Blog about Jerusalem coming to Broadway. Great news for New York audiences.

Rylance Ready for Another Broadway Role in ‘Jerusalem’
Will the Tony Award-winning actor Mark Rylance (“Boeing-Boeing”) be competing against himself in the 2011 Tony competition for best actor in a play?

It’s increasingly possible. Mr. Rylance has earned rave reviews as the delightfully narcissistic street performer Valere in the play “La Bête,” which is scheduled to run at the Music Box through mid-February, and it now looks very likely that he will return to Broadway in the spring to reprise his widely acclaimed London performance as Rooster Byron in Jez Butterworth’s play “Jerusalem.”

Mr. Rylance won the 2010 Olivier Award (Britain’s equivalent to the Tony) for best actor for “Jerusalem,” a play of epic themes about the state of England, about fathers and sons and friendship — all humanity. The play centers on Byron, a drug-dealing foul-mouthed antihero and squatter deeply beloved by his friends and customers, who join him to pass the time in the middle of a wood that developers hungrily eye.

The three-hour-plus dark comedy also was named best play, and Mr. Rylance best actor, in The London Evening Standard Theater Awards in 2009. The Royal Court Theater production in 2009, and subsequent transfer to the West End in 2010, were the talk of London playgoers until the play closed and Mr. Rylance moved on to “La Bête.”

American and British theater producers have been eyeing a Broadway run for “Jerusalem” for some time, and Mr. Rylance said in an interview Thursday that it looked likely for this season. He said that the director of the London production, Ian Rickson, was on board, and that his co-star, the British actor Mackenzie Crook — who played Rooster’s buddy Ginger — had agreed to join the Broadway production assuming all necessary arrangements with Actors’ Equity can be made. (Mr. Rickson directed Mr. Crook as the forlorn playwright Konstantin in the Kristin Scott Thomas-led “Seagull” on Broadway in 2008.)

“It’s all moving ahead well for ‘Jerusalem,’ especially now that Mackenzie is coming over, because I wasn’t sure I could do it without him,” Mr. Rylance said. “Everyone seems on board for the spring, the final arrangements seem under way. The plan is to start rehearsals for Broadway three or four weeks after ‘La Bête’ finishes up.” The producers have been in talks with Equity about bringing over British actors like Mr. Rylance and Mr. Crook for the spring and making all the other necessary deals. A spokesman for the production said on Friday that there was nothing to announce at this point.

If “Jerusalem” does open on Broadway this spring, it would be before April 28, the cut-off date for plays and musicals to qualify for the Tony Awards. The best actor category will include five actors, and there are several high-profile performances on tap by men this season: from Al Pacino in “The Merchant of Venice,” James Earl Jones in “Driving Miss Daisy,” and Jeffrey Wright in “A Free Man of Color” in productions now under way, to Ben Stiller in “House of Blue Leaves,” Robin Williams in “Bengal Tiger in the Baghdad Zoo,” Joe Mantello in “The Normal Heart” (if that production comes together) and others in the spring.

So it’s possible, of course, that Mr. Rylance would not be nominated for both “La Bête” and “Jerusalem.” But two big performances in one season by Mr. Rylance, widely regarded as Britain’s leading stage actor today, could make for a very interesting Tony ballot.
Arts Beat - Rylance Ready for Another Broadway Role in ‘Jerusalem’
#19

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Posted: 11/15/10 at 8:02am


This is great. Last Friday, I literally had the same thought. I was going through pictures of him in all of his different roles over the years and was thinking to myself, "Anyone could tell just by looking at a montage of his photos that he's one of the greatest actors alive, even if they'd never heard of him before." His physicality is... I dunno. You almost can't even wrap your head around how he does it. His Duke in MEASURE FOR MEASURE remains one of the oddest, most strangely compelling theater performances I've ever seen.
CHURCH DOOR TOUCAN GAY MARKETING PUPPIES MUSICAL THEATER STAPLES PERIOD OIL BITCHY SNARK HOLES
#22

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Posted: 11/15/10 at 5:29pm

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I think he's amazing.

The afternoon I saw him in twelfth night still lives on in my memory. Still haven't seen another version since. Don't want to ruin the spell.

Mark Rylance is legitimately the best actor alive. (an MR love thread)

Can't be beat. And he was awesome in Boeing Boeing, and worth the price of my ticket for La Bete. I just wish I'd made it to Jerusalem.

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