1,483 posts
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Post by steve10086 on Dec 8, 2019 9:28:16 GMT
There has been lots of talk about Colour Blind Casting on here, and personally it makes no difference to me what colour/race an actor is as long as they give a good performance. But last night I saw the Les Mis tour in Cardiff and Eponine had a very noticeable Scottish accent.
It really affected her performance for me as it just stood out so much and sounded so out of place, not just because hers was the only Scottish accent in the show, but because it also made the song sound very different to what you’d normally expect.
Obviously Les Mis accents aren’t accurate to start with as they should all be speaking French! And if they sung in English with French accents it would sound ridiculous. But John Owen Jones doesn’t sing JVJ with a Welsh accent, and I’m sure a lot of the cast have their own regional accents but you wouldn’t be able to tell, so why was Eponine Scottish?
I’m not saying this situation is “wrong”, I just found it strange and distracting, and I wonder what other people think.
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19,793 posts
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Dec 8, 2019 10:23:46 GMT
The actor in the staged concert who plays the drunken student had a very pronounced Northern Irish accent I noticed.
Given that the rest of them are playing French peasants with what seem to be east London accents I can’t say it matters that much to have a few other dialects. It’s more likely to take me out of a performance when someone is doing an accent badly. We hear American accents so much that a bad imitation is instantly clockable.
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3,040 posts
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Post by crowblack on Dec 8, 2019 10:52:25 GMT
as they should all be speaking French! But what would be the appropriate accent? Early 19thc French was probably very different to modern and with wide variations of accent and dialect within that (most of the characters, including the middle class students, are not from Paris). Reading biographies of 1790s French revolutionaries there are often comments by observers about their regional accents and I imagine a 'geographically authentic' English language version of 1830s Paris with many working class characters would have to use similarly strong British regional accents. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2019 10:53:20 GMT
Six the Musical allow their actresses to keep their normal accents, for example, on the UK tour, the actress playing Catherine of Aragon has a very strong Welsh accent, and Anna of Cleves has a strong Midlands accent.
It’s the same in other productions - in the cruise ship version, two of them are Scottish and one is from the north east.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2019 12:49:59 GMT
Just checked and the actor is the wonderful Frances Mayli McCann who was in, among other things, Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2019 20:36:37 GMT
The actor in the staged concert who plays the drunken student had a very pronounced Northern Irish accent I noticed. He must have been in the final cast of the original run as well because I noticed that at the last performance at the Queen's. Fra Fee's accent was similarly strong in the film version. It is a hard accent to soften! |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2019 22:09:58 GMT
The actor from Les Mis is Raymond Walsh.
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Post by oxfordsimon on Dec 8, 2019 22:32:15 GMT
Accent becomes an issue for me when it impinges on my ability to understand what the actor is saying/singing. It does help if accent also doesn't get in the way of character or plot.
I haven't had many issues with this over the years - thankfully.
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642 posts
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Post by Stasia on Dec 9, 2019 13:56:10 GMT
Dropping my 5 cents here. As a foreigner, I'm fine with accents. I mean, I can tell one from the other for most distinctive ones, like Scouse or Geordie, but I won't be able to name all of them. And basically I don't care. I like listening to various accents (as long as I understand them), and they obviously don't matter much for me in shows like Les Mis, where the characters are supposed to be talking in French.
I might probably notice "wrong" accent only if it's, say, a story happening in America but someone consistently says smth with the British accent. But I won't notice if it's inconsistent!
UPD also I'm pretty sure it's a director's choice in the case as described with Eponine.
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Post by edi on Dec 9, 2019 14:23:30 GMT
As a foreigner accents only bother me if I cannot understand them easily. It mostly happens only when British actors put on fake American accents. From my point of view I wish more shows allowed actors to speak their own accent
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Post by oxfordsimon on Dec 9, 2019 18:18:15 GMT
I think consistency is also key.
Taking Eponine as an example - she should sound as if she came from the same streets at the rest of the Thenardier clan - after all, that is her background and where she grew up. Sure, she would have picked up some elements from the people she met as she became more independent (trying to fit in with the student group she liked to hang around with and so forth)
So I can understand why people find it slightly odd when she does not reflect the same world as that of her family and friends. On the whole, we each reflect the voices that surrounded us as we grew up. Growing up in a tavern would have exposed Eponine to a broad range - but her family life should be in her adult accent somewhere.
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237 posts
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Post by harrietcraig on Dec 9, 2019 22:23:03 GMT
I asked a friend from Alabama what she thought about the upcoming production of The Glass Menagerie, which will be performed in French with English surtitles. She replied, “I would rather hear French (with subtitles) than bad Southern accents.”
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2019 0:10:39 GMT
Seen a couple of American plays done with British accents, they worked surprisingly well and it universalises the story (A Streetcar Named Desire - Lyric Hammersmith & Our Town - Almeida).
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2019 13:01:19 GMT
Don't shows have a diction/accent coach?
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1,972 posts
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Post by sf on Dec 11, 2019 18:27:25 GMT
Don't shows have a diction/accent coach? Often, yes - but dialect coaches are often brought in relatively late in the process, and there’s a limit to what even the best coach can accomplish in a few short sessions with a cast. And that’s before we acknowledge that some actors are better at accents than others. There are actors with a good ear for dialects who can pick up anything and reproduce it accurately - look at that clip of Chris Pratt doing a perfect impersonation of the Essex accents in TOWIE on the Graham Norton show - and then there are actors whose best skills lie elsewhere. I love Maria Friedman, but when she does an accent she always sounds like she’s Doing An Accent. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 12, 2019 0:18:44 GMT
Don't shows have a diction/accent coach? Often, yes - but dialect coaches are often brought in relatively late in the process, and there’s a limit to what even the best coach can accomplish in a few short sessions with a cast. And that’s before we acknowledge that some actors are better at accents than others. There are actors with a good ear for dialects who can pick up anything and reproduce it accurately - look at that clip of Chris Pratt doing a perfect impersonation of the Essex accents in TOWIE on the Graham Norton show - and then there are actors whose best skills lie elsewhere. I love Maria Friedman, but when she does an accent she always sounds like she’s Doing An Accent. Thanks for the reply. Does anyone know if there is a difference between an actor learning an accent compared to an impressionist doing an accent or even an actor playing someone in a role compared to an impressionist taking off that said person. An impressionist will highlight certain characteristics and perhaps exaggerate them but apart from that is there any difference? |
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Post by jojo on Dec 16, 2019 11:00:18 GMT
I can't say varying accents bother me, especially in musicals, so long as the diction is decent and the vowels aren't too clipped or nasally. We'll all have preferences for some accents over others, and we'll require a lower level of diction to understand our own accent compared with others, but a bit like colour-blind casting, I'd say it's fine so long as it isn't required for a plot point - so what?
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