I don't think "highly polished" was a good phrase to use
though Genevieve certainly grasped what I was getting at!
What I think I meant
is that a performance of a monologue/speech that seems really well-prepared, may be just that. The candidate may have worked hard and well on the speech, but something about the way it is delivered may suggest the possibility of too much outside influence - good influence, that has led to a well-prepared speech - but nonetheless a suspicion that the speech is good but the candidate may not otherwise be a strong one . I don't think this means that a well-prepared speech will be a bad thing at all - certainly far better than one that is ill-prepared - but the school will want to try to find out whether it is only the speech that is well-prepared rather than the candidate!
I was invited to participate (as a working actor - hah! - with some teaching experience) in a workshop for drama school auditionees - I won't say where. I really enjoyed it and it was fascinating! It was a practice session for them, where we did some warm-ups and improvisation and then they did their speeches and received feedback.
One of the reasons feedback is hard to give, particularly if you don't know the candidate and you don't have much time, is that a phrase you use, the one you have chosen either carefully or sometimes carelessly, where you are fairly sure you know what you mean by it, may mean something different to someone else! Feedback almost always needs discussion - so with a teacher or tutor it can be helpful - but from someone you won't see again it can just be puzzling and frustrating. It often needs the candidate to question it: "do you mean I...." or "can you clarify what you mean by..." - and of course drama school applicants never really get the chance to do this.
It was an uncomfortable fact that some of those present at the workshop were likely to fall at the first hurdle. I tried to give positive and constructive criticism, and it was hard to know how "critical" to be. After the mock audition, I asked one auditionee about the speech he had chosen, mainly because I wasn't convinced he entirely understood it. He admitted that he hadn't read the play...
There was one auditionee whose Shakespeare piece
was unpolished. He hadn't really got to grips with the verse and he stumbled more than once. Nonetheless, his performance was electrifying. His physical presence seemed slightly dangerous (though he was a charming young man) and this made him so very watchable. All his movements were natural and instinctive. On the other hand, there was another intelligent and very well-rehearsed speech from another candidate that left me slightly cold. It was hard to know quite what to say, and I felt that, if I had been auditioning, this would be a student I would want to know more about, to find out what was preventing him letting go and being more spontaneous. His speech was "polished", in that there were no obvious faults in his delivery and there was no doubt at all that he'd put in a lot of work and understood it, but something was somehow missing.
Another auditionee was trying so hard that I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel, which was quite uncomfortable to watch, and at least here I felt I could give him some useful advice.
It's interesting (to me at least!) that I remember the boys better than the girls. The girls in this particular group were all of a good standard and well-rehearsed, but none of them stood out in a staggeringly good (or particularly bad) way. They had almost all chosen speeches that were too old for them though...
(his jaw dropped!) 
hmmmm.. hang on a minute ....I will have to read your post twice, maybe three times, as my brains are like spaghetti now (you have a good point!)
