Black and Asian actors should not be overlooked

Published Tuesday 4 March 2008 at 11:45

I caught sight of your cover story this week ‘BBC is still hideously white’ (February 21) and felt prompted to write to you. Also, I read Lyn Gardner’s recent preview of the Eclipse Theatre project Angel House in The Guardian Guide. I quote: ‘Sit in most UK theatres and there are likely to be few black faces either on stage or in the audience’.

I have been an avid theatregoer for almost 40 years now and as I look back over the programmes of recent plays I have seen in the West End, Chichester’s productions of Macbeth (20 actors) and Nicholas Nickleby (27 actors), the RSC’s King Lear (23 actors) and The Seagull (21 actors), The Country Wife (15 actors) and The Sea at The Haymarket, Glengarry Glen Ross, Swimming with Sharks and The Importance of Being Earnest at the Vaudeville.

And some that I haven’t seen: Absurd Person Singular, Dealer’s Choice, The Vortex, The Lover and The Collection, The God of Carnage, Speed-the-Plough and The 39 Steps.

Not a single black or Asian actor in any of them.

Most of these plays can be billed as classics. Is there no place for black and Asian actors in the classic repertoire anymore? There was a time when the RSC regularly presented black and Asian actors in leading roles. Rupert Goold recently directed Rough Crossings and Trevor Nunn directed Porgy and Bess, so they can’t be completely unaware of the situation. I am sure people have all sorts of reasons and some of these plays require very small companies, but you only have to take a few steps away from the West End to find much more inclusive casting - the Royal Court, the Almeida, the NT, the Young Vic.

The situation isn’t helped when you have critics like the Daily Mail’s Quentin Letts berating the National Theatre for pursuing a colour-blind casting policy for War Horse - ‘I’m afraid I was also irritated by the colour-blind casting. The Devon of 1914 is rendered a multicultural affair. Oh, spare us’ - and taking the mickey out of Statement of Regret - ‘all black - no colour-blind casting here, thank you’.

Two productions I have seen recently - a gala performance at Stratford East celebrating the tenth anniversary of Tiata Fahodzi Theatre Company and Arturo Ui at the Lyric - prove that there is an amazing array of acting talent available.

The actors exist. They shouldn’t be overlooked by West End producers otherwise the situation pointed out by Lyn will never change.

Terry Penfold

Croxted Road

London SE24