Imitations and limitations of life: Copying toward the endgame of cool | MARK HUGHES COBB

Without audio to verify accuracy, harmony of concert, degree of duplication, which is your favorite voice to imitate?

Is it:

• Chris... to. PHER. Walk. ... N.

• Jaaaahn Wayun.

• wilLUmSHAT. ... ner.

• Bullwinkle!

• Wooderson all right all right all right.

• Ewwmer Fudd.

• Cardinals Ximénez, Biggles and Fang.

• Heath Ledger's Joker.

• Hulk. Smash.

• Any of the Fab Four Liverpudlians.

I've tried 'em all in rehearsals for "Twelfth Night," in my role as Feste, a chaotic jester, and many times they get laughs from my fellow cast and crew. Sometimes it's because they're freaking BAD, but hey. And again, cheap plug: We're playing again Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m. in the Allen Bales Theatre. All free, and worth every ducat.

More: Body-language-spotting a no, before you even know | MARK HUGHES COBB

Aging sets in if you try Nixon, the Kennedys, LBJ, Spiro Agnew, Jack Palance (exception granted if you drop to the floor and explode into one-handed pushups, ala 1991 "City Slickers" Oscar-winning Palance), Kirk Douglas, William F. Buckley Jr., Henry Fonda .... Though eternal exceptions should be made for those even These Kids Today may recognize, like Muhammad Ali, Bogey, Brando, Capote, Nicholson.

How do the list above and paragraph below compare? Aside from distinctive, idiosyncratic sounds.

None in the list was imitated by David Frye, at least not publicly. All in the graph were, and then some.

And now you're asking who's David Frye? Fair question. Once upon a time, when there were only three channels and as many late-night shows, there was a thing called an impressionist, the comedic, not painting kind.

Folks like Frye and Rich Little made good livings impersonating, kinda like Rob and Fab, Melania, Napster, every Johnny Depp performance save "A Nightmare on Elm Street," and "Uptown Funk," though actually entertaining. "Saturday Night Live" either killed the profession or hired all its best, aces such as Kate McKinnon, Chloe Fineman, Dana Carvey, Melissa Villaseñor, Darrell Hammond, Bill Hader, Cecily Strong, Phil Hartman....

Everyone still does it, right? Mimic cooler people until you develop your own layer of whatever?

It's like the 10,000-hour rule — Though, sad to say, they only count when concentrated, dedicated, deliberate practice aimed toward a goal, so TV-watching, head-scratching, belching and other ingrained habits won't lead to much except loneliness and an early grave — in that we rarely leap straight from raw talent to accomplished art. There are steps. Writers start by reading, in my case for fun, then information, then both, then for both plus the ability to pick assembled words apart, hold them up to the light and see how they function. Painters follow the strokes of others. Musicians start learning notes and notation, fingering and breath, and playing covers.

In the hit series "The Queen's Gambit," the plot tries to have it both ways: Prodigy Beth (Anya Taylor-Joy for most of Beth's life; an intense, stoic Isla Johnston as the younger) was born and partly raised by Alice (Chloe Pirrie), a Cornell University mathematics professor whose struggles with mental health leave Beth alone at 9 (her bio father is barely in the picture), and raised in an only mildly-Dickensian orphanage.

Mild could describe much of the show, which happily avoids melodramatic cliches. Beth's adoptive mother Alma, a magnificent Marielle Heller, though unhappily married, a drinker and smoker, doesn't seem hampered by addiction, which makes a hepatitis diagnosis come swinging in from left field, and despite what some accuse, doesn't seem intent on profiting off Beth's chess skills, but instead rewards and encourages what she sees fulfills her daughter.

And speaking of out of left field, what the actual zugzwang was the deal with Townes (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) as her true love, her ideal? Who was this guy again? And why were we supposed to care when he returned? Seems like something was edited out to fit "Queen's Gambit" into its seven blocks. This felt like a major goof in line with "Ted Lasso" 's mishandling of Nate's redemption arc. More than one viewer looked back to see if they'd missed an episode.

But to impressions: Beth begins, semi-realistically, as a math savant, owing to her mom's brains. Dad's from some random rich family that made its fortune exploiting the workers and raping the land, as do most solid-gold capitalists. She stumbles upon chess in the orphanage basement, meeting surly, near-mute janitor Bill Shaibel (veteran actor Bill Camp, definitely from the "Oh yeah, THAT guy!" camp) who's playing chess, seemingly, with himself. After showing Beth the basics, the janitor quickly becomes overwhelmed.

In the haziest of screenwriter logic, Beth "sees" moves in vast shadowy figures on the roof of her group bedroom, late nights when she hasn't swallowed routinely-handed-out tranquilizers (like Librium, a popular anti-anxiety med in the '60s, where most of the show's set), or, again hazily, when she has downed a fistful. I'm mildly, again, certain the amount she's shown gulping would have killed a carthorse, but hey, maybe being a magic prodigy also brings Wonder Woman strength.

So ignoring gaping plot flaws and annoying boys — the love interests are pretty much all zeros, dopes, pests or all three — and the dancing around whether or not consuming booze and pills like Doritos could be kinda awful and potentially mind-destroying, Beth whirs into flights of fancy, "seeing" multiple potential moves, playing them out in variety and sequence, trying to plot out all possible attacks and defenses, and subsequent responses to her opponents' moves, which as you can imagine, amounts to some pretty hairy dancin' on the ceilin' cipherin'.

Taylor-Joy is as always a magnetic figure, not just for the obvious porcelain skin and hypnotically expressive eyes, but because she was already an experienced, accomplished artist at 24 (roughly her age when shooting this series),. She languidly fell into the rhythms and kineticism of an under-stimulated but overdriven 12-year-old, then scaled up through awkward discovery and high school years, and gradually accreted levels of style and sophistication while climbing out of the basement, into smelly gyms for local tourneys, and up to Mexico City, Paris and Moscow competitions that are watched and covered with a fervor not unlike that for football, though with fewer, though no less passionate, fans.

Where the actor's art plays most subtly is in the fact that Beth is, very likely, somewhere on the autism scale, or at the least, severely traumatized by the wreck she survived, and her mother's manic, continual ranting which lead up to the tragedy.

Despite what some would have you believe, trauma typically isn't something you get over, not even with time. Learn to live with, yeah, build around, possibly, push down into a manageable shape, could be. I've got a couple of scars on my arms and legs, one under my chin, mainly from the usual childhood scrapes, a deep-ish one from a weird fall in the rain, a few feathery marks from the time my right arm and shoulder went through a car windshield — low speed, fortunately — and a couple from a heated but high-paying job cutting steel knives on a diamond wheel, where sparks flew onto uncovered skin. They're barely noticeable, though of course I know they're there.

You can probably guess the analogy. Trauma and deep cuts don't vanish. They're just part of you now. Those who inflicted pain — especially those who did so not only willingly, but maliciously — should have to pay, but alas, there is no justice, as Terry Pratchett's Death taught us. There's just us.

Beth learns by adapting behavior from those around her, her tough orphanage pal Jolene; her janitor mentor; the semi-geeky chess twins Mike and Matt (Matthew Dennis Lewis and Russell Dennis Lewis) who may be the only people in the show, aside from bio- and adoptive family, who don't overtly try to sleep with Beth, though why not isn't clear, as they're far better friends than most folks she runs across; and from her stylin' adoptive mom; then, of course, from the wider world, from a worldly, suave French model, from magazines and travel, and onward.

Her imaginary games hit a ceiling, and yes, that pun was just loitering, and so she finally, toward the end, does the smartest thing: Sees her limitations, but learns and adjusts. All along she's read books about chess and its champions, famous matches, but she's an intuitive player, one who overwhelms opponents. When she meets any true student of the game (only a few, because this is her story), she's stymied. But not stalled. Because she mimics them until she can do it better on her own.

We love Beth because in her we see someone we'd like to imitate: She suffers, stumbles, rises, falls, but ultimately masters the endgame. As a grown, realized woman, she's ready for another day, another start, another board.

Reach Tusk Editor Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Life's imitations, limitations: Copying toward cool | MARK HUGHES COBB