Moment of Reflection

Back in college I had a friend, Jeffrey, who was wild for Patti LuPone. While appreciated the talent, La LuPone didn't appeal to me as the diva doppleganger every self-respecting gay man seems genetically predisposed to adopting. I never got it.

Then one day I watched a rerun of Law & Order in which Patti LuPone played the defense attorney. Her delivery was brilliant. L&O is essentially an hour of exposition. You have actors standing in front of a camera telling you what happened. You know little-to-nothing about the characters and what you do know is only preciously leaked by the writers and producers. I love the standard characters and the actors who deliver those lines. Delivering exposition is the hardest thing an actor ever has to do:

"Aren't you Billy Bob, the young man they've sent the blood hounds after
because you defiled Farmer Brown's daughter last week after the
hailstorm?"

"Yes, but now we'd all better get some sleep because tomorrow we have to
cross that river that has overflowed it's banks and drowned three orphans.
Mighty treacherous, that there river."

Yet, the actors at L&O have built careers delivering such fact-driven drivel. Sometimes the only way to do it is to follow the old theatrical maxim "LOUDER, FASTER, FUNNIER." As a result the regular actors of that show have developed a rhythm in their deliveries. You can see the same in other shows that have run for awhile. Actors begin inflecting lines in the same way, they pause at the same point within a sentence. Professional hazard.

Then LuPone came into the show and she broke the rhythm. She still delivered pages of exposition, but she found ways to pause or draw out syllables that didn't impede the flow, but still drew attention to her. I wrote to her after seeing that and asked if her technique was intentional and she responded by saying no, she was just trying to make sense of the lines.

Sometimes James Wolcott gets it right. I've not seen LuPone as Rose, but take it on faith that she's brilliant. I have, however, seen Close in Damages. And sometimes James gets it wrong. At one time Close was a brilliant actress, but I have to say that I find her performances becoming more and more manored. Her theatrical training shines through and she's playing to the balcony, even in close ups. Sometimes she's lucky enough to find a director who can make that work on film, but I've never seen Close give a televison performance that seemed to fit the screen.

The actress of a certain age who should be drawing praise is Michelle Pfieffer. Yesterday I treated myself to a movie and saw Hairspray. It's well-paced and charming. Travolta and Walken are delightful, but frankly the person who really delivers the goods is Pfieffer. She gets camp villany, yet she can be fragile and Strasberg real.

Now, back to work...