Into the Breach With Branagh : British company may help fill Taper’s Shakespeare gap

Let’s be rash: Even if the just-announced productions of “King Lear” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Mark Taper Forum this winter turn out to be the two worst evenings of Shakespeare that Los Angeles has ever suffered through . . . it’s a terrific idea for the Taper to bring them over from London.

We do not expect these productions to be the worst Shakespeare that the city has ever seen. Rather, we expect them to be among the best, up there with Peter Brook’s “Midsummer

Night’s Dream” and Ariane Mnouchkine’s “Richard II.” But even if they’re not, they signal a new resolve at the Taper--a decision to stop talking about repertory theater and start doing something about it.

Who or what is the Renaissance Theatre Company? All we know is that it is run by the young British actor Kenneth Branagh. Branagh stars in the fine new film of “Henry V,” for which people were standing in line the other night at the Westside Pavilion, just as if a Shakespeare play could be something that one went to for the pleasure of it, rather than as a cultural assignment. Not only does Branagh play the lead in the film, he adapted Shakespeare’s script, directed it, and persuaded people to put money into it.

All this at the age of 28--a decade younger than Laurence Olivier was when he made his famous wartime film of “Henry V,” on government money. This has led to a certain amount of loose talk about Branagh’s being “the new Olivier.” One can imagine Lord Larry looking down from his dressing room in the sky and saying: “Cheeky bastard.”

Actually it will take years to know if we’ve got a “new Olivier” here--i.e., an actor who can do anything. All we know from “Henry V” is that Branagh can play a blunt-featured young warrior who knows how to manipulate people. His Hamlet, his Lear, his Othello are to come--and not necessarily tomorrow. (Branagh will be playing Edgar in “Lear” at the Taper, while Richard Brier plays the title role.)

But, Branagh’s day will come. That’s because he’s a creature of the British theater, where Shakespeare is part of the structure, rather than being an add-on, as with us. Had Dustin Hoffman grown up in the British system, he might not have played Shylock right away--but he wouldn’t have had to wait 20 years to speak a line by Shakespeare.

The resident-theater movement was supposed to do something about this. It was supposed to acclimate actors and audiences to the idea that the classics are part of the theater’s normal output. But we in Los Angeles are still treating the classics as special, and not doing them especially well. The disappointment has been particularly sharp in the 25-year history of the Music Center, which wants to present world-class performances, but has seen precious few of them when it came to Shakespeare, when done by Americans.

“Hamlet,” “Othello,” “The Tempest,” “Richard III,” “Macbeth”--Shakespeare’s plays just didn’t seem to “take” at the Taper or the Ahmanson. The actors couldn’t make the words come naturally without getting mushy and Method-y. Yet when the actors tried for high-style, the text sounded regimented and false. You either got too much of a performance or not enough of a one.

Will the Renaissance Theatre Company’s residency at the Taper find the middle way? Maybe not. As we learned from the BBC’s “The Shakespeare Plays” series, British Shakespeare can be both smug and dead, and maybe that’s what Branagh’s company will prove to be in person.

But it’s gutsy of Taper producing director Gordon Davidson to invite them to have a bash at it. And with luck their work will approximate the quality of the ensemble in the “Henry V” film, whose speech is absolutely world-class, without a moment of smugness.

Not just the speech of the big guest stars like Derek Jacobi and Paul Scofield; but that of the actors playing messengers and servants. Note, first, that the speech has been scaled down for the microphone. Note, second, that it still has lots of vocal energy, an entirely separate quality from volume. Note, third, that it always sounds natural--an entirety separate quality from vocal laziness. Shakespeare’s characters see language as their birthright and love to use it.

It’s amazing how little trouble we have understanding the characters in this “Henry V,” considering that the play is 400 years old. In fact, there are words and passages that we don’t understand: yet we get the gist.

Why? Not because Branagh’s actors use a British accent. That’s a false issue. Scholars actually say that Shakespeare’s original actors would sound like Americans, if we could hear them today. The first reason we understand the text is that Branagh’s actors themselves understand it. They know what the words mean, they know the way the phrase is joined together and they know where the entire passage is going.

Second, they have no problem hooking the language to the emotional life of the character. It pours out on the words, as well as around and under them. Third, they enjoy the music of Shakespeare’s language. Better put, they enjoy the taste of it, the crunch of the consonants and the juice of the vowels.

American English can be talked this way too, and Davidson hopes that Branagh’s actors will do some acting labs at the Taper while they’re here, as the Royal Shakespeare Company used to when they visited American college campuses. The idea is to share acting discoveries, not to dictate vocal etiquette, and the interchange will work both ways, if Davidson and Branagh are as open to each other’s thinking as they seem to be. Bravo.