Wow, I really feel misunderstood. "Where can I go to repair all this wear and this tear???""
Marknyc, how can I be that demanding, when I'm one of the few people around who actually seemed to enjoy ON A CLEAR DAY? Notwithstanding that I found HURRY to be a lowpoint and one of the most inexplicably adapted parts of the production, a missed opportunity to develop not only David's character but the dynamic between him and Mark, in a way similar to the original show.
Gaveston, my dear man, first of all "mano a mano" is just an expression conveying that we've debated this before. As I know you well know. Second, I'm not saying that the audience has to gain an explicit understanding of Daisy's inner desires, as they perhaps would if this were a Sondheim song because Sondheim might make damn sure they were there for the world to see. I'm saying that in the hands of a great artist, like Barbara Harris, they got a beautiful performance of a song that's a wonderful character study - and that it finally worked for her, and reached the audience, because her interpretation was informed by the inner workings of Daisy's psyche, including her own limitations of self-awareness. If you recall when we first discussed this, Miranda, who seemed to have the inner track on this - either from personal experience or from book learning or both - confirmed that that's exactly what happened during rehearsal.
In other words, subtext, often of psychologically subtle variety (all the more so in a show dealing with psychiatry, the metaphysical and complete personality changes over lifetimes) informs an actor. The audience doesn't have to be conditioned for a complex analysis on that level, but a sensitive audience is aware of a performer who is committed, informed, and fully briefed on what the piece he/she is performing in is about.
Someone very wise once said - and I'm paraphrasing - "While I'm watching a show I don't have to understand precisely what the character is going through, but the performer needs to know it, and if the performer doesn't, it sucks!" To take this one step further, there are things the character him or herself doesn't even understand about him or herself, but the actor needs to explore those in rehearsal and what happens should be informed by them.
To quote Sondheim "Ah but underneath...." In a Sondheim lyric the audience is made fully aware of such underpinnings. In a Lerner lyric, no. But, there is an "underneath," and, and whether it's Sondheim or Lerner, Pinter (who, unlike Sondheim also generally doesn't telegraph the "underneath" - far from it) or Simon, while the character may or may not fathom it (for all the Sondheim characters who are self-aware, even of their own limited understandings of themselves, there are others - Giorgio in "Passion" for instance - who frequently are not). But the actors and directors must. A sensitive audience may not be able to pinpoint the difference, but they will know it by the quality of the performance.
Thus when Harris allows herself to sing out loud and happy toward the end of HURRY, the actress connects with Daisy's inner need to live! This doesn't mean that Daisy herself realizes the importance of letting herself go, this is a cry of liberation, the real her striving to get out. But it means that Harris did her homework, understood the building tension, the moment when she can forget her self-consciousness in Mark's presence, and what it all means in the context of the show and what it says about the woman she is embodying. And it means that because of all of that - which the audience will most likely not be able to explain, nor should they be expected to - the members of the audience are nonetheless thrilled with the way a great actress has connected with the material. And with them.
Updated On: 12/14/11 at 02:42 PM
