Arcola Theatre have released a fascinating video of Penny Dyer talking about her input into The Daughter-In-Law that starts previews on Wednesday 23 May.
D H Lawrence’s play The Daughter-in-Law – getting its first London staging in over 15 years at Arcola Theatre – is written entirely in a regional spoken dialect that only existed 100 years ago among the Nottinghamshire pit communities, and the cast have been grappling to get to grips with it.
A searing and unforgettable drama about heartache, inequality and the ties that bind, The Daughter-in-Law is set in the heat of the 1912 miners’ strike. A groundbreaking play, not published or performed in Lawrence’s lifetime, it puts the people of a mining community on stage and as the central focus of the play in their own voice and dialect.
Director Jack Gamble decided early on to call in a brilliant dialect coach to work closely with the company. “This was to add as much authenticity as we can to the way that this language is spoken,” he says.
Penny Dyer, former head tutor of speech and dialect at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), is one of the most respected international film and theatre voice coaches. She has been a leading specialist in her field for over 30 years, and has worked with many famous actors such as Helen Mirren, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett (on playiong the English queen in Elizabeth The Golden Age), Naomi Watts (on become Princess Diana in Diana) and Reece Witherspoon.
Penny said of working on The Daughter-in-Law: “These old dialects are things that are about working physically, either ‘down pit’ or ‘on ‘t land’, or if you were a woman, you were non-stop – you know ‘weshing’ washing, ‘wringing owt the weshing’, ‘kneading yer dough’ to make bread. You’re talking about a very active way of using yourself physically, which is something that we’ve lost touch with. A lot of people sit for their work in front of a laptop, and the only things that move are the fingers. So actually sometimes just by doing those physical activities, it can really help you get everything into your voice and into the accent.
Penny’s expertise has been used on dozens of movies from The Queen and Mrs Henderson Presents to Frost/Nixon, The Danish Girl, Testament of Youth and this month’s acclaimed release, On Chesil Beach. On stage she has worked consistently for the National Theatre, Donmar Warehouse, Royal Court and Almeida and in the West End. In 2007, she brought out a series of six dialect CDs, called Access Accents.
