Style: Acting in High Comedy, and: Acting with Shakespeare: Three Comedies (review)

Style: Acting in High Comedy by Maria Aitken and Acting With Shakespeare: Three Comedies by Janet Suzman provide meaty advice and anecdotal wisdom about acting comedy, a craft that often, as these two authors freely admit in their books, defies clear explanation. Written by veterans of the British stage, these two new additions to Applause’s Acting Series do not provide sufficient instruction in and of themselves for the newcomer to this more specialized area of acting. However, these books do provide insightful commentary and helpful explanations of some of the more well-known scenes from comedies of times past, particularly with respect to the historical context of the plays and their use of language. For these reasons, they are good additions to an acting teacher’s or an advanced actor’s library.

Aitken suggests that Style: Acting in High Comedy is not intended as a scholarly, critical analysis of comedy but rather for the actor who must find the way to make the words on the page spring to life in performance. It is in this realm that her book provides the most insight. Like other acting texts on “styles of acting,” Aitken’s book provides the standard steps an actor should take to prepare a role for high comedy (research the period by reading both published and unpublished materials, examine the art work, listen to the music of the period, etc.) Through this process, Aitken suggests the actor must devise the means by which his or her character can live truthfully in the world of the play.

Aitken divides her book into several chapters and uses selected scenes from high comedy, such as The Way of the World, The School for Scandal, Much Ado About Nothing, The Importance of Being Earnest, Private Lives, The Rivals, and The Double Dealer, to illustrate her points through line-by-line paraphrasing, analyses, and commentaries. She begins with the reminder that an actor must understand the period in which the play is written and the “rules” for success within its society. Her first chapter, “Delivery: Naturalism and Energy” plainly tells actors that in order to make the witty and heightened language of high comedy more natural to the actor and accessible to the audience, the actor must know his or her lines inside and out; only then will the actor’s words take flight. Aitken explains that today’s actors often want to develop the psychological make-up of characters without concern for the exact words they are speaking. With high comedy such an approach is fatal because the character is the language and vice versa.

Aitken’s line-by-line commentary on Congreve’s The Way of the World is a fine example of how a close examination of language can yield information as to character development. Aitken also provides helpful explanations of some of the archaic references or words whose meanings have changed over time. But while such explications of The Way Of The World show off her ability to mine a scene of high comedy for all its wonderful innuendo, her discussion of the need for energy in line delivery in The School for Scandal lacks the keen eye and fresh ideas she provides in her other commentaries. However, her analysis of repartee with respect to Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing brings things back on track, with practical advice on how to “pass the baton” or “serve it up” for the other actor(s) when involved in a feisty round of repartee. Likewise her discussion of irony and its subtleties in Gwendolen’s and Cecily’s tea scene in The Importance of Being Earnest is superb because of its careful grounding within the text and the acting hints a text can offer.

The discussion Aitken provides on “Character” using Noel Coward’s Private Lives is less impressive, perhaps because it is weaker in...