Doing Lines: When Actors Fail to Recall

Peer Gynt: It’s a fairly good Guthrie production, in my
humble view–although it would’ve been smart, even merciful, of the director,
had he condensed the meandering fourth and fifth acts. But what I’m more
interested in discussing here is the review penned by Star Tribune critic Rohan
Preston, in which he derides lead actor Mark Rylance for not knowing his lines.
Is that fair, do you suppose?

Preston did something
similar in November ’06 when reviewing The Rivals at the Jungle Theater. It
seemed Claudia Wilkens, who played Mrs. Malaprop, hadn’t memorized her lines in
time for opening night; in fact, she hadn’t yet mastered them when I saw the
show two or three nights later. From an audience perspective, this proved a
problem: How to know where the malapropisms stopped and the fumbled
lines began? But still, I was surprised by the chitchat in the theater
community following Preston’s critique: Had he
hit Wilkens below the belt, people wondered. Is it fair to criticize an actor
for not knowing his or her lines, since a critical review is traditionally more
concerned with the substance of the play?

Methinks it’s fair to criticize actors when their flubbed
lines impede upon the theater-going experience. But then again, I’m an audience-centrist.
I write from an audience perspective; I write to the audience, as if they might
one day care to see the show. And misfired lines do a lot to hurt our
experience. In fact, we feel ripped-off when artists
aren’t ready to present the work we’ve shelled for! At last night’s showing,
Rylance was still flubbing a few of his lines, but it wasn’t enough to interfere
with my experience. As a matter of fact, by then, he had done a fine job
inhabiting the character. He used a mumbled, sort of messy speech pattern that, I felt,
brilliantly captured the inner workings of this troubled, cloudy-thinking youth.