tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post108596822034334021..comments2024-03-14T02:43:01.811-05:00Comments on Broadway & Me: The Political Correctness of "Tings Dey Happen"jan@broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05871839027802882307noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-59393515130374414922007-08-12T12:17:00.000-05:002007-08-12T12:17:00.000-05:00(Thanks for your kind words about my guest bloggin...(Thanks for your kind words about my guest blogging.) Like your husband K, I too have a real animosity for one-person shows, so I won't see this one. But I think the broad point your raise--ie, about the role that race of an actor plays in how an audience responds to a character onstage-- is an important and interesting one, especially in an age where "non-traditional" casting is getting more prevalent. Sometimes such casting doesn't affect me in any way at all; I just want the performance to be good. But sometimes it does. Sometimes it can take me out of the play, particularly when it involves characters who are meant to be blood relations. Some time ago, I saw Denzel Washington give us a very nice Richard III in Central Park, but some of his immediate relations were white, some black, and in the already-confusing family situation that Shakespeare created I sometimes found myself REALLY puzzled as to who was whom. Most recently, I chose to invent a backstory for myself alone that in the Roundabout revival of "110 in the Shade," the late wife of the John Cullum character must have been black, because two of his children (Audra McDonald's Lizzie and also her older brother Noah) were clearly not exclusively Caucasian. Worked fine for me. But I've long remembered something that Leontyne Price said when asked why she never sang Desdemona in Verdi's "Otello." (With her particular voice and acting, she would have been superb, and the world of opera is filled with color-blind casting.) She replied that she always felt that "Otello" should be a story about a black man and a white woman. Well, yes, but...boy, I would love to have seen her onstage in Act IV singing Verdi's gorgeous Willow Song! Would it have mattered that a black woman was playing a white one? As Rodgers and Hammerstein's King of Siam said, "Is a puzzlement!"Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com