Sir Oliver Surface - Two weeks out
What Fun! The School for Scandal has been around for almost 250 years, and never gets worse with age. The parallels with today’s society are shockingly familiar, and the jokes, though wordy, are still funny. In the current production I have been cast in, it has been updated to modern day and to my city as “The School For Scandal…of Vancouver”, and presented as a version of ‘The Real Housewives of…..’.
It has been so long since I have performed any kind of broad Comedy that the rehearsal process has definitely been a challenge: To actually learn and deliver the voluble dialogue so that it makes sense, moves the plot forward, and is still either a funny line or a set up to one, is only one part of the equation. Characterization of the role so that it is believable, while all the time performing comic asides to the audience and breaking ‘the fourth wall’ is new to me. Great comedy is more like verbal dance, with physical choreography, along with the correct timing of set-up lines, comic rejoinders, and asides, and I’ve collaborated on this, as well as updated dialogue to make the piece as understandable as possible to a modern audience. I have the feeling that each performance will be exhausting. Even my own Stand Up isn’t as complex as this to get to punchlines!
In this production, Sir Oliver’s character has been made a titled Actor (So I have included my favourite Olivier and Branagh observations!), away from Vancouver in London for 16 years, where he has made his fortune, and received a knighthood. In addition to the two characters he becomes during the play to his Nephews, I have tried to match his overall persona to his name (As Sheridan originally wrote), and make him big, bold, and vain – a character ‘on the surface only’, as other people see him. I am the tallest and oldest actor in the cast, so it has been quite straight forward for me to achieve using my own physicality.
Moving from this base, Mr. Premium the Broker has become a Cowboy direct from Texas, with all that Oil money to spend, and Old Stanley is an ancient, bad tempered, English guy, just like the ones we see around the city. I am using the same wardrobe throughout, basing it on this very flashy ‘Actor-Manager’ look that I have created, but definitely with the head of the city’s Shakespeare festival in mind! In the final act, when my Oliver character meets both of his nephews at the same time, and they both mistake him for the character they know him as, we have great fun in changing look and body stance for each one in a very fast sequence.
From a dramatic point of view, the adaptation definitely doesn’t play favorites: None of the characters have much of a redeeming quality, all are shallow and more interested in their own reputation to others than anything else – “Seinfeld” comes to mind. Indeed, Sir Oliver is completely unmoved by his long-lost nephews’ problems, until he gets something from them. The comic barbs come very naturally to a modern dress adaptation, even when it is paired with the original script – for the most part.
With two weeks to go, I am still waiting to ‘peak’ my performance, but with the overall character painted, the disguised characters decided, wardrobe (and shoes) settled, I feel that this definite stretch to my abilities will also be what it is designed to be – funny – when I do. Between now and then it’s all script work outside of rehearsals, as I try to deliver every single word of the script – both modern and original.
