I am certain the British have suffered thus for years:  Listening to Gwyneth Paltrow rhyming "basin" with "buffalo", finding out that Bridget Jones speaks like the Countess of Wessex, Groundskeeper Willie...

But it turns out to work both ways.  I went to see John Patrick Shanley's Doubt at the Tricycle Theatre last night, where four Irish and English actors battled their way through various American accents.  It's not that the accents were particularly off (none of them committed that cardinal English-into-American sin of pronouncing the state as "Minnasoder"; there are 300 million Americans, none of them say this).  It's that the actors were clearly so focussed on getting the accents right, they blew nearly everything else:  pacing, tone, emphasis, musicality.  Words were dropped, forgetten, fluffed, lines were stepped on, all because the actor's brains were too busy trying to get their jaws stretched right.

Shanley is a musical playwright (he wrote the delightfully overwrought Moonstruck), and if the actors are pausing after every fifth word to concentrate on the accent, it ain't working.  Nor did it work in the Menier's recent Take Flight, nor did it work at all with the mother character in the Lyric's recent Angels in America, where the poor actress struggled so badly she managed to kill every joke she had.

Doubt was set in a New York catholic school in 1964, with the main characters being Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn.  Surely it wouldn't have been out of the question to make them both Irish and have the two actors use their natural accents?  Only Nikki Amuka-Bird, in one very good scene as a surprisingly argumentative mother, really flourished and was able to commit.  And maybe it all worked for non-Americans in the audience; we certainly don't complain when Americans do English. 

Maybe it's revenge.  Therefore, on behalf of all ex-pat Americans, I hereby apologise for Don Cheadle's cockney in Ocean's 11.  And all the international damage caused in the name of Dick van Dyke.  And from now on, only Meryl Streep and the guy who plays Spike in Buffy will be allowed to do accents.  Will that help?