There’s a difference in the way Americans do mediocre Shakespeare and the way Brits do it. Ours tends to be easier to recognize for what it is. American acting training is heterogenous and feelings-forward; we still put a lot of stock in dubious Strasbergian notions of authenticity, and we’re scared of things above, beyond, and fundamentally opposed to realism.
We tend to deflate the cosmic into the casual , making word salad while we’re at it. For the Brits, there’s at least a base-level expectation of textual rigor. At the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art one summer, I spent three days sitting on the edge of my chair (we weren’t allowed to lean back) painstakingly reading Pericles aloud as a towering Liverpudlian director snapped at our cast after every phrase, “What does that mean?!” If anyone started their answer with, “Well, uh, basically —” she’d scream, “ No! ” and we’d start again.
You don’t leave RADA not knowing what you’re saying or without an appreciation for the richness and versatility of Shakespearean language and a drive to make it sing. But being able to speak Shakespeare, to utilize poetry and communicate meaning, will still only get you so far in bringing one of his vast, infinitely faceted plays to life. It will probably mean — as is the case with the King Lear now visiting the Shed, starring Kenneth Branagh and co-directed by Branagh, Rob Ashford, and Lucy Skilbeck — that you can tell a clear story with at least a superfic.