Theater: Kevin Kline's Ultimate Test

A gifted American actor plays Hamlet off Broadway

When Kevin Kline was a freshman at Indiana University, his ambition was clear: to become a concert pianist. But one day, as he and fellow students were watching auditions for a campus production of Macbeth, the director pressed them all to read for roles. The lines, Kline recalls, "meant nothing to me--they might as well have been in Croatian. I just used the deepest voice I could and tried to sound Shakespearean." That was enough to get him cast as a "bleeding sergeant" who speaks 30 lines of verse, collapses and is carried offstage in Act I--"to wait two and a...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!