Accenting Differences

Earlier in the year I saw Emperor and Galilean at the National Theatre, a rarely performed Ibsen epic about the life of Julian, the last pagan emperor of Rome. Reviews were mixed, but I enjoyed it thoroughly apart from one niggle. That was the discrepancy in accents between Julian and his entourage and his best childhood friend (name forgotten and I haven't been able to identify it online). Julian and co spoke origin-neutral RP; Best Friend came out with Pure Scottish. That made their long-lasting friendship totally unbelievable - as unbelievable as if Julian and co were all Glaswegians and the Best Friend who had grown up with them somehow picked up LA street slang.

The problem is that people who grow up together spending years in the same social milieu always end up with the same accents. Any transplanted parent - a German in the UK, an Australian in Canada, a Geordie in London, knows that as their children become adults they will speak the language and dialect of their peers, not their ancestors. It is highly unlikely that bosom buddies who first met in childhood speak differently from each other. 

I am having the same problem with a dvd the Other Half and are watching of Children of Dune, a 2003 production that first aired on the Sci Fi channel. Sumptuous settings (mostly CGI, but acceptable) make up for erratic acting and a complicated plot (luckily, I've read the books, so I know what is going on; even with my ongoing explanations, the OH is struggling to keep up). Presumably to save costs, the cast is a mix of US, UK and European, which leads to a constant clash of accents. Yes, in an empire that is scattered over dozens or hundreds or planets, you are going to get diverse dialects, but couldn't the casting director group the accents together so that there was at least some conformity and believability - have all the Brits play the evil Corrinos while Americans act the heroes and the weirdly-accented Europeans are restricted to the rest of the galaxy?

This is not the first time I've come across this phenomenon, and each time I've been irritated by the director's failure to understand the characters that he or she is working with. Accent is as essential to character as age and physical appearance and to consider it irrelevant when casting a play or a film is disrespectful to both the script and the audience. And if you don't respect me as an audience, do not expect me to respect your sloppy work as director.