THE SOUND OF SPEECH

Last Sunday afternoon, I saw the closing performance of David Hare’s The Judas Kiss at BAM’s Harvey theater. At the very end, when Oscar Wilde intones his own apotheosis over swelling musical strains, I thought that Rupert Everett’s voice might have been miked, but overall it was a pleasure to hear what certainly sounded like the self-amplified yet modulated voices of trained stage actors, without the phony electronic reverb that is endemic on Broadway. And everyone’s diction was good, which is not always the case with fast-talking British actors. My first exposure to that was when I saw John Wood in Sherlock Holmes in 1975. I still remember his performance, the excitement of the play, but the rapid fire delivery swallowed a lot of dialogue for me.