To say that no-one in the UK seems to care is, to me, hyperbole. I would suggest that most actors on both sides of the pond want to do the best job they can and doing an accent well is part of the job. There are some actors who couldn't give a whit whether they get it right or not and others who are hired even though they can't do accents.
There have been shows on both sides of the Atlantic where the accents were utterly atrocious. I name KINKY BOOTS over here and the semi-recent MERRILY in London as classic examples of really bad accent work production-wide. For Kinky Boots, I've lost count of the number of theatre professionals in NY who ask me (I'm British) if I've seen KB and whether "are the accents really as bad as I think they are?" And I know at least some of the actors on the show feel bad about the accents in the show but it isn't their fault. On both shows, I would say that the problems were, primarily, not the fault of the actor's but more to do with directorial and/or producing decisions.
My Fair Lady is a show where use of accent is a major driver of the plot and I feel that any production needs to get it right. Eliza switching from Cockney to Standard British is so crucial and very few productions do it well. Dolittle himself should be easier but, if the actor doesn't get the accent right, it becomes caricature. |
