It is a common complaint that West End theatre audiences are an homogenous breed - upper middle class, middle aged, affluent, probably a little smug and almost certainly white.
Sometimes the trend is bucked - indeed Tabard has learnt of one staff member at The Stage who had occasion to ask a fellow audience member to ‘kindly move their skateboard’ so he could get to his seat while at a performance of Avenue Q. Not a refrain one often hears.
However, this week, on attending a preview of Edward Albee’s The Lady from Dubuque at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, Tabard found the cliche of the archetypal theatregoer firmly reinforced.
In the audience, there was what one might describe affectionately as an ‘old duffer’, accompanied by his similarly middle Englandish wife.
The play which the pair were watching involves a black character named Oscar and, being a comedy that deals in social awkwardness, there are plenty of references to the colour of his skin.
One of the first of these, when he is introduced to the rest of the characters as “This is Oscar - he is black”, elicited a strange response from said gentleman.
“He is not black,” he snorted, indignant at the error which he believed had been made by the casting director.
Obviously, he had never encountered one of these mythical creatures of which he had heard so much talk - for indeed, the actor in question - Peter Francis James - is black. The wife quite correctly pointed this out to her husband. “Yes, he is dear,” she said and patted him indulgently on the arm, as if he was always making this kind of mistake.
I suppose we should probably give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he had left his glasses at home.
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