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MACHINE GUN MOUTH  LORNE KENNEDY as "THE PRESIDENT" |
Veteran actor Kennedy
pulls off stunning feat
By DAVID ZINMAN
of TheColumnists.com
Remember the lightning-fast
dialogue made famous on the TV program "The West Wing"?
The cast spewed out lines so quickly you had to rivet yourself
to the tube to keep up with the plot.
But their machine-gun delivery rarely lasted more than a few minutes at a time. What would you say the chances are that an actor could deliver his lines at breakneck speed--not unlike an oldtime tobacco auctioneer--for one hour? And make every word come through clearly?
I'd say it couldn't be done.
That is, until I saw a veteran thespian named Lorne Kennedy pull off this stunning feat in a whirlwind comedy called "The President."
Kennedy, who played the title role and had most of the lines, did this three times a week from April through October at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the Lake, Canada. The world famous repertory company, founded in 1962, puts on plays by George Bernard Shaw and writers of his period (1856-1950) as well as dramas whose action takes place during Shaw's lifetime.
Kennedy's performances had theatre-goers in stitches. Word of mouth spread fast and every show sold out. Audiences gave him standing ovations. Critics were also impressed.
"Kennedy deserves 10 dozen roses for his astonishing performance," said The Toronto Star. "His rapid-fire diction, joyously absurd body postures, and total command is an object lesson in how to play farce. You will not have 60 funnier minutes this year."
The frenetically-paced one-act play, written by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar in 1929, is rarely performed. But it once attracted Hollywood's attention. It became the basis for the movie "One, Two, Three" (1961) directed by Billy Wilder and starring James Cagney.
The madcap story, adapted for the Festival by Canadian Morwyn Brebner, is a takeoff on the Pygmalion myth. It tells about a bank president named Norrison who panics when he finds a young heiress in his care has eloped with a scrungy Communist taxi driver. To make matters worse, she says she is pregnant.
To make matters still worse, her millonaire parents, big investors in the president's bank, are due in town in one hour. In those 60 minutes, the president sets out to transform the cabbie into a well-dressed, polished son-in-law. The president starts barking orders to his army of assistants and secretaries and everything suddenly rockets up to supersonic speed.
As I watched Kennedy's race through a motor-mouth tour de force, I wondered how he learned his role. It's one thing to memorize a long part. It's another to spout words as fast as you can for the full course of a play.
When I called the 56-year-old Canadian actor, he told me the role did not give him a moment to relax. He said he had to rev up his speech to five times normal speed. And he finished every performance--three a week--soaking wet.
"I don't usually perspire much," said Kennedy, a native of British Columbia who did his early theatre training in England. "But I am drenched at the end."
Not surprisingly, going on stage became something like a consumate test of acting. "Each time it was over, I sighed and said, 'I've run the obstacle course again.'"
Mistakes? He said he had only one totally error-free performance in the four-month run. But he made only minor slips--like saying "instructions" instead of "intentions." If you were in the audience, you probably wouldn't have caught a single mistake. His words flew so fast theatre-goers didn't have time to detect any gaffes.
Even before the opening, Kennedy decided to rehearse his entire part before every performance. "It can't be the first time you say those words out loud (on stage) the day of the performance or it won't work."
So each morning of a performance, he ran through the whole play in his basement. Then, he was off to the theatre to check the stage and props. "If there is one thing that is distracting, it can derail you. So I see that all the pens are there on my desk, and papers are slightly folded so I can pick them up in a flash."
When the play started, his challenge was not only to go at top speed for an hour but to think ahead quickly to anticipate his next lines. "Normally, when you are acting you operate on two levels. One part of your brain watches what is happening now with your lips and tongue. Then, there's another part concentrating on what you will be saying in the next three seconds.
"When we were starting, I wasn't sure I would always know what I should be saying next. It made me edgy. But by working hard, it turned out everything fell into place. Both levels (of my brain) started operating so quickly, it was like I grew a whole new set of dendrites to let me know what was coming in the next three seconds."
In his long career, Kennedy has appeared in many Shakespearean roles and in such well-known plays as "Nicholas Nickleby," "Bent," and "The Elephant Man."
But "The President" has been his most challenging part. "You don't encounter that kind of role often," Kennedy said. "When I got it, I said, 'Let's see if you can slalom down this avalanche of words and still make sense and be funny. It takes a lot out of you." He paused, then added: "But it's been thrilling."
©2008 by David Zinman. The Zinman caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo is courtesy of the Shaw Festival. This column first posted Oct. 13, 2008.
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