Accentuate the positive

Anyone who's seen more than a handful of productions at Buffalo-area theaters will tell you that when it comes to accents, a select few actors can pull them off, and plenty of them can't.

It's not uncommon for a cast -- otherwise eminently capable and moving in their portrayals of German sergeants or cockney housewives -- to adopt accents that approach camp in their complete lack of resemblance to the source dialect. To my ear, and I suspect to many others, a lack of consistency in the accent department can have the effect of throwing even a fine production off-kilter. More often than not, productions that dispense with accents entirely (except in the rare case when actors have enough time and training to properly prepare) come off far better, and without that stifling sense dislocation we all experience when we hear Kevin Costner's half-hearted rendition of, say, Sir Robin of Loxley.

So it was with plenty of interest that I read a profile by Alec Wilkinson in this week's New Yorker of Tim Monich, dialect coach to the stars. It provides a fascinating glimpse into just how difficult adopting a foreign accent can be, just how much practice and discipline it requires, and how seriously Monich takes it. Here's an excerpt:

With an actor who has no facility at all for accents, Monich tries to teach simple things to keep him from sounding ridiculous. "What you would do with anyone untalented," he said. "Try to protect them from mistakes. Give them some confidence."

Resistance is most likely to come from actors in secondary roles. "You never hear it with the stars, because they want to be good," he said. "The kind of actors who do accents are the kind who treasure the transformation. They're very amenable." I asked Monich if he had ever encountered an actor who refused his help, and he said only once. "At the Public Theatre. The part required an upper-class English accent, and he sounded as if he were from Ohio, but said he sounded fine and wasn't going to change anything. It was the only time I ever had an actor yell at me."

"Did you ever work with him again?"

"I never even heard of him again," Monich said.

Unfortunately the article isn't available on the New Yorker Web site. But for all you sticklers for accents -- and I know you're out there! -- it's a great read.

--Colin Dabkowski