The Rise of Estuary, the Death of RP and Actors Who Can't Speak Proper

[Sylph]

Casting directors are lost for words because the next generation of British actors just cannot speak proper. The rise of "Estuary English" has left children with the intonation patterns of Lily Allen and Jonathan Ross, regardless of their background.

The decline in Received Pronunciation has not just transformed the presentation of BBC News. Film and drama producers are struggling to fill period roles that require unrepentantly middle-class vowels. BBC One is holding an open casting session tomorrow to try to find two girls to star in a film-length adaptation of the classic children's novel Ballet Shoes. Victoria Wood and Marc Warren have signed up to star in the story, by Noel Streatfeild, set in 1930s London. But the challenge of finding two ballet-dancing leads who can act, twirl and – most importantly – speak in middle-class accents has defeated the producers.

"We've been to drama schools, ordinary schools and children's agents, but we still haven't found the right girls," said Susie Parriss, the casting director.

"It doesn't matter whether you go to public schools or comprehensives, children just speak common estuary now. That is the trend. But this story requires our leads to speak with a clear middle-class accent." The great names of British theatre fear that young acting talent may never recover from a "mockney" upbringing. Scripts often have to be rewritten to accommodate actors trained in regional speech patterns at drama school. Dame Eileen Atkins, who appeared in the TV adaptation of David Copperfield in 2000, has told young actors that they will have to master Received Pronunciation if they want to take on important, classical roles. Otherwise, she said, they will play parlour maids forever.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article2120715.ece

It is enough to have Professor Higgins spinning in his grave. A shortage of actors who can speak "posh English" is destroying the quality of British drama, according to some of the country's best-known actors.

Dame Eileen Atkins, Prunella Scales, and the Oscar-winning screen writers Ronald Harwood and Julian Fellowes argue that greater emphasis should be given to received pronunciation rather than encouraging regional accents.

They believe that an obsession at drama schools with regional speech patterns combined with a decline in education standards has produced a generation of actors incapable of playing the great classical roles.

The shortage is now so severe, they warn, that some scripts have had to be rewritten to accommodate the actors' limited vocal skills. Producers also have difficulty casting parts for children who speak "properly" and have had to bypass stage schools in favour of private schools where standards of English are higher.

Dame Eileen, 70, star of films such as Gosford Park and Cold Mountain and a forthcoming adaptation of Vanity Fair, said that young actors needed to master received pronunciation if they were to have any chance of taking on the great roles. The alternative, she warned, was a career playing parlour maids.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4194086/Estuary-English-is-destroying-British-drama.html

Variation: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article502913.ece

Parlour maids? I hope she's right. Considering how Downton failed to reproduce period accents which such upmarket acting talent, a few years in the future King Lear will be speaking in Cockney.

Dame Eileen wrote a letter to The Times a few years ago about the rise of Estuary and it was online, but I failed to find it, it had a very good line which made me laugh.

[Sylph]

"I wasn't born speaking in RP, but I knew if I didn't master it I would never get a crack at playing the big parts in Shakespeare's plays in the capital," says the distinguished actress. "It is not about being snobby, but just realistic."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mandrake/4681368/Eileen-Atkins-voices-concern-at-Lenny-Henrys-accent.html

[Sylph]

"There's a fashion in drama schools now not to get rid of your basic accent. That's bad for those from working-class areas. They'll never get classical leading parts. It's pretentious to hang on to an accent to 'show where I come from'. There's such rot talked abour roots," said Dame Eileen.

Her own roots were in east London, where she grew up as the daughter of a seamstress and a gas meter reader, but she shed her cockney accent before embarking upon her career. "You have to be pushy to get out of the working class," she explained.

Ironically, Dame Eileen is now typecast as "posh" and hankers after working class roles. In Upstairs Downstairs, which returns to our screens this Christmas, she plays the aristocratic Lady Holland.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8190071/Dame-Eileen-Atkins-why-must-actors-have-regional-accents.html

[springrite]

I watch some British channels here in China and even the BBC News is very "regional". Add to that the sports (A Scot or Irish commentator a must for football, Indian or Pakistani for cricket) and entertainment, I have to take out a black and white DVD to tell Kimi what Queen's English really should sound like.

[Sylph]

They are so hideous, it's appalling. Even George Osbourne had to 'dumb down' his accent (which I don't really like, though: too squeaky) to appeal to the masses. In order to do that, he had lessons with "Valerie Savage, a £100 an hour Harley Street vocal specialist".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8174139/WikiLeaks-George-Osborne-received-training-from-Harley-Street-vocal-coach.html

No one can pull this off nowadays without descending into parody, which is a shame:

http://www.youtube.com/v/tiNVy5nfbcQ

[Sylph]

And even the Queen is 'less posh':

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1080228.stm

Prince Charles being spotted using glottal spots.

[The Six]

properly

[Sylph]

properly

I left proper for a reason.

[MDL]

20-odd years ago, wasn't it  generally agreed that Shakespeare's accent would have been closest to today's west country accent? More "ooh-aar, me lovely" than Larry Olivier. Certainly, the grotesque, strangulated squawking of our vile royal family would have been an utterly alien sound to Shakespeare's ears.

[drogulus]

20-odd years ago, wasn't it  generally agreed that Shakespeare's accent would have been closest to today's west country accent? More "ooh-aar, me lovely" than Larry Olivier. Certainly, the grotesque, strangulated squawking of our vile royal family would have been an utterly alien sound to Shakespeare's ears.

     True, but I would prefer that the sounds of Olivier, Gielgud and the various Redgraves be preserved somehow. Though the pronunciation may have served as a mark of class, it also was the language of the theater and a vast range of expression was conveyed. The one may have led to the other: the way educated people talk becomes the means by which expressive speech is delivered by anyone trained to deliver it.

[MDL]

     True, but I would prefer that the sounds of Olivier, Gielgud and the various Redgraves be preserved somehow. Though the pronunciation may have served as a mark of class, it also was the language of the theater and a vast range of expression was conveyed. The one may have led to the other: the way educated people talk becomes the means by which expressive speech is delivered by anyone trained to deliver it.

Well, there's always Stephen Fry!

[drogulus]

Well, there's always Stephen Fry!

    Watching Jeeves & Wooster it occurs to me that no one could make the series today with actors the same age as Fry and Laurie were in the early '90s.