Worse British/American Accent

Hello all,

Earlier this week I caught the Young Vic production of Fun Home in London. The cast, especially Young Alison played that night by Brooke Haynes knocked out it out of the park. Jenna Russell's "Days By Days" rivals Judy Kuhn's. The show only had one weak spot and that was the Accent Zubin Varla used for Bruce. The accent didn't seem natural at all, at some points he sounded like he had food in his mouth and at other times it seemed like he was trying to make sure each word sounded American as possible. Varla's Bruce is still pretty good but the bad accent was bothering me all night.

What are the worse American or British accents y'all have seen?



EDIT: I want to add that on the other side of the spectrum Brooke Haynes did one of the best American accents I've heard.

Updated On: 7/21/18 at 09:39 PM

I suppose it is ancient history but ... A Chorus Line London production, 1978, the dancer who was supposed to be from El Paso did a weird southern belle accent. Forty years later I still remember it because it was so jarring. (If OP is from Dallas, OP probably knows El Paso natives have no discernible accent at all, apart from standard American.)

Bernadette Peters in Song and Dance. I'm sure she gave an excellent performance in the theatre all things considered but I can't listen to the album without cringing.

There's also the British cast attempting southern American accents on the Whistle Down the Wind cast album. It's terribly distracting.

Updated On: 7/21/18 at 10:49 PM

It's a hard thing as the quality of the accents depend a lot on the writer, director, producers (who often don't want to pay for accent coaching!), and then finally - more rarely than you might think - lazy actors.

The worst accents for me are when they are jarring enough to draw me out of the piece. Inaccurate accents I can take provided they aren't being done self-consciously.

Worst British accents in American productions - Kinky Boots. Even the actors know how bad the accents and I've even heard them apologize for them. That says to me it's more down to the creatives rather than the actors. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Dreadful (with a couple of notable exceptions) through almost the entire cast. The Play That Goes Wrong - replacement cast only were very self-conscious.

Worst American accent in British productions - Merrily We Roll Along. Some were good but some were horrible. Little Foxes at the RNT way back when.

I've little to no idea how the accents are in the current LCT My Fair Lady. For a musical in which much of the plot hinges on accents, I've heard and seen very little comment and video posted. What little I've seen doesn't inspire me to TKTS the show.

I'm overall happy I got to see Angels in America live but several members of that production struggled with an American accent. Denise Gough in particular seemed to think that a nasal whine = American accent.

poisonivy2 said: "I'm overall happy I got to see Angels in America live but several members of that production struggled with an American accent. Denise Gough in particular seemed to think that a nasal whine = American accent."

I also noticed Susan Brown struggling with a certain "o" sound a lot. For example, "long" would sound like "lahhhhng".

It wasn't that big a deal overall, but the show being near-perfect makes me pay more attention to its imperfections...

Matilda.

Now, I give that show some slack, considering it wasn't only written by British authors, but is also supposed to be set in England (as opposed to the Danny DeVito film), but some of those accents on the Broadway cast recording were... oof, really not that great!

I give those Broadway kids a pass, because I'm sure it was very hard to remotely try to teach them how to actually be British (some fared better than others), but I absolutely hated the 'mixed American-British accent' they came up with to handle the situation. I saw the tour, and hearing Matilda pronounce the hard r's was really grating and very noticeable.

The Wormwoods are a completely different story, what with their exaggerated British accents, especially compared to the more simple/eloquent British accents from Miss Trunchbull and Miss Honey, which you could argue is based more on how they were raised and whatnot, but I think the point of the Wormwoods' exaggerated accent comes from how exaggerated and comically horrific they are as characters, so there's that.

Updated On: 7/23/18 at 01:11 AM

J. K. Simmons in The Snowman. One of the worst attempts I have ever witnessed in film. Made me chuckle out loud.