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Matt Trueman: The mysteries of great acting

‘What exactly is great acting? It’s a question we hardly ever ask – and that’s problematic’

John Goodman, Damian Lewis and Tom Sturridge
John Goodman, Damian Lewis and Tom Sturridge in American Buffalo
© Johan Persson

It's often claimed – loftily perhaps – that British acting is the best in the world. We heard it again last week, as various Brits – Bill Nighy, Helen Mirren, Ben Miles and more – picked up Tony noms for recent performances in New York.

In London, too, we saw a series of brilliant performances: Damian Lewis and Tom Sturridge in American Buffalo; Chiwetel Ejiofor in Everyman; Joan Iyiola and Letitia Wright in Eclipsed at the Gate.

But what exactly is great acting? It's a question we hardly ever ask – and to my mind, that's problematic. It makes acting seem like a mysterious activity; uncodifiable and unpracticable. The impression left is one of happenstance, as if great performances are born of the stars aligning: the right actor in the right part at the right moment in the right company.

Or else it makes acting seem like a natural talent, a 'god-given' gift. Either you've got it or you don't. That leads to the tendency to presume that great actors like Simon Russell Beale, Imelda Staunton or Rory Kinnear can do no wrong. You start to define great acting as acting done by a great actor – and that leads to circularity. What makes a great actor except great acting?

An American Judge, Justice Potter Stewart, once refused to offer a strict definition of hardcore pornography. "I know it when I see it," he told the court. Perhaps the same is true of great acting. We know it when we see it.

Somehow, though, that's just not enough.

I've just finished Antony Sher's new book, Year of the Fat Knight
— a journal of his process on the RSC's Henry IV. As in Year of the King, which charted his route to Richard III in 1984, Sher talks through the day-to-day decisions that shaped his performance as Falstaff: everything from picking at the text to trying on voices for size. He studies obesity and alcoholism, gets to grips with a body suit and trims his facial hair to achieve a fuller face. It's a brilliantly full-bodied account that mixes the practicalities of a performance with artistic ambitions. You learn as much about Sher himself as you do about Falstaff — and what's acting if not the meeting of actor and character?

I wish more actors wrote about their work like this. Of course, every actor's process is different and few are as methodical as Sher. Sheridan Smith, for instance, is a brilliant actor who can't put her process into words. She's more instinctive than that. However, those that can, should. It's far more instructive about acting than any number of how-to guides.

Ultimately, great acting is about great choices. It's not about an actor's Meisner technique routine or recalling the emotions felt for a long-dead pet. Russell Beale talks of acting as "three-dimensional literary criticism" – building a character up from a text, turning them into a specimen of humanity. It means finding the tension in individual moments and making those moments add up to a coherent whole. Great actors create great characters – and they do so bit by bit, moment by moment, choice by choice.

Mark Rylance in Jerusalem
Mark Rylance in Jerusalem

Take Mark Rylance in Jerusalemroutinely held up as the great turn of our times. Remember that astonishing early morning routine: bursting out of his vintage Airstream, breathing in the day and hitching up his trousers. His choices went way beyond Butterworth's text. In the script, Rooster "kneels and sticks his head in the trough." Rylance hauled himself into a handstand and dunked himself in, head-first, like a human teabag. Infinitely more interesting. Instead of simply swirling his hangover cure – that cocktail of vodka, milk and raw egg, sprinkled with speed – Rylance tucked the concoction down his pants and shimmied his ass. It's those sort of choices that make an actor an artist.

For my money, contemporary criticism rarely treats them as such. It fails actors – remembering great performances from the past in detail without doing the same for those of the present. Think about it: When was the last time you saw an actor's performance properly, fully, assessed in a review? There's almost never the space. Tynan and co. did so — but the culture's changed. Directorial decisions tend to take priority; the whole is more important than any individual part, leading or otherwise. You might get a paragraph, describing an overall character, but you hardly ever see moments described in detail. Supporting roles get, at best, a sentence; sometimes nothing more than acknowledgement: "Strong support from…" That's the stuff of school reports, not proper criticism.

It's a shame. Acting's the most ephemeral element of theatre. Writing survives in scripts; designs in production shots. Acting's gone with the curtain call. There's no recreating a performance either. Rylance has said he's not done with Rooster, but if he comes back, it won't be the same performance. Will he have the strength to dunk himself into that trough? Criticism can fix performances in high-definition description – arguably even more vividly than video.

It goes even further than description, though. When did you last see a performance criticised? I don't mean assessed, I mean deemed below par. It's curious. Critics almost never write ill of actors.

There are reasons for that: the precariousness of acting careers, their need to go on the next night, the assumption that blame lies elsewhere, with directors or in casting. Equally a poor performance, unless it's a major lead, is unlikely to be reason enough to skip a show. No Taurus ever ruined Antony and Cleopatra.

This is a problem. How can we speak of good performances, if we're so loathe to identify bad ones? It gives the impression that we fawn on actors; that they can do no wrong. There must be such a thing as a bad performance, so why don't we read about them in reviews?

It's never fun. Criticising an actor feels like criticising a person, where knocking a production or a design is more detached and impersonal, about an object or an event; somebody's work, not their person. And yet, skirting that is patronising. It refuses to treat actors as artists. It ignores their choices and their processes to marvel instead at their natural talent, charisma and watchability. Besides, if we won't admit and assess bad acting, how can we ever hope to know great acting?