The Phenomenology of Involuntary Shark-Jumping

Years ago in London, I saw a production of Romeo and Juliet where Juliet was about 14 and Romeo looked 29. A month later I saw another. This time, Romeo was about 19 and Juliet was pretty close to 40. The common theme here is Predator v Bambi-in-the-headlights. But the odd thing is, in each case it kind of worked. Okay, maybe it was unintentional. But in each case, the wild miscasting offered a criticism or commentary on the play as it was meant to be. Of course you had to keep your eyes open, but if you stayed on the alert, you got to see the whole play in a kind of 3-D.

I thought of these miscast Veronesi this week when we watched a DVD performance of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, with Placido Domingo and Tiri Te Kanawa. Manon, as you may know, stands at the head of the tradition that culminates with Bridget Jones’ Diaries: a great soppy soap opera of a novel, beloved of courtesans and wanton shop-girls either. Manon the character has a prominent place in the rogues’s gallery of bad-news girls. De Grieux, the boyfriend, is just as much of a twit as you would expect him to be. Domingo and Te Kanawa do a fine job with the music, but because this is disc, we have close-ups, and so they have to act, too.

Manon and De Grieux must be not a lot older than Romeo and Juliet. Domingo and Te Kanawa are just about 40 (it’s an old performance). At first it looks silly, but on a thought, you can see the Romeo and Juliet principle at work: the grownup performance of the children’s parts operates as a criticism of the parts they pretend to play.

Actors have probably known this all along, but this echo-chamber effect is just now beginning to catch my attention. It amuses me that Faye Dunaway plays the wise old shrink on the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair as a sly riff on her performance as the romantic lead in the original (the remake was clearly superior, not so?). And that half the cast of Branagh’s Hamlet had played the prince before themselves (sample here). And I loved it when Marlon Brando parodied Marlon Brando (in The Freshman – but come to think of it, maybe in every performance he ever played). And yes, I am the guy who always looks for cameos.

I suppose what I’m learning here is that there is no such thing as a performance in a vacuum—every one is a criticism of a criticism, or worse. It would explain, inter alia, the insight that every TV show, after the first season, is in competition with itself. It seems that one way or another, we are all trying to jump the shark.