Nailing the malleable accent for the Scottish actor is only one detail of the puzzle Cox had to solve with the help of dialect coach Dawn-Elin Fraser. Indeed, when Cox opens the play with a story about watching men ride bulls as a child, he slips into that relaxed Texan cadence, endearing himself to the audience but when he’s haranguing Alabama Governor Wallace over suppression of voting rights among black citizens, the growl comes out. Marchánt Davis, Brian Cox, and Bryce Pinkham “LBJ would lean into the Texan twang more when he was trying to charm someone or when he was pulling out a folksy anecdote in order to disarm or make a point.” “Each bring a different, very personal way in on the musicality of Robert’s language-not unlike LBJ himself,” says director Bill Rauch. In creating a character who nearly switches personalities according to his goals and environment, the actor set out to find the voice to match-a voice previously brought to the stage by Jack Willis (a Kansan with a Midwestern bent) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Bryan Cranston (to Tony-winning effect) in Robert Schenkkan’s first LBJ play All The Way on Broadway and for HBO. “He really cajoles, seduces, bonds, blackmails he does the whole bit.” “He’s such a brilliant operator,” Cox says of the man he now inhabits eight shows a week in The Great Society at Broadway’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre. One of the things that fascinates Brian Cox about President Lyndon Baines Johnson is that the 36th President of the United States was a different person in every room he was in.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |