“You can’t make something untruthful.” That’s Julian Fellowes’ defence of the all-white cast for Half a Sixpence, the West End musical he created with Cameron Mackintosh, George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. In an interview with the Stage last week, Fellowes discussed diverse casting and said: “When you are doing a modern drama there is absolutely no reason why anyone can’t play most of the parts. In every contemporary drama, there is a completely realistic option of a much more variegated cast than we are usually being given.” But he said it was a different situation for period dramas and musicals: “Sixpence is set in 1900 in a seaside town – you’re in a different territory.”
I feel sorry for him with this debacle. I’m no historian but I know people of colour had a presence in the UK long before the Windrush era. Maybe if your play is about race you might want to be specific about who is saying your words, but Half a Sixpence isn’t a musical about race relations in the 1900s. It’s based on HG Wells’s novel Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul, adapted by David Heneker and Beverley Cross as a vehicle for Tommy Steele, playing an orphan who inherits a fortune, enjoys some of it, loses it, and only then realises that money doesn’t guarantee you happiness.
Would it really be jarring if some of that story’s characters were played by actors who aren’t white? Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, revived at the National Theatre, is a critically acclaimed sold-out hit and has the British-born Tanzanian actor Lucian Msamati playing Salieri. How historically accurate is that?
Most audiences these days are used to diverse, rather than “literal”, casting. Ultimately, we’re all in the game of creating fiction, great stories, letting our imaginations run away with us and hoping those watching will join us for the ride. And audiences are smarter than we give them credit for – they relish seeing themselves and others represented in all kinds of tales.
My guess is that they probably only realised everyone in the room was white after they started rehearsing Half a Sixpence. And now they are in a backpedal of spin. Matt Hemley, writing in the Stage, called out such casting last year: “Where race isn’t specified in the roles and an entire cast ends up being white, [it] smacks to me of casting directors putting performers into roles that match their own image. It’s an unconscious bias that needs to be addressed.”
Times are, gradually, changing. More of the arts world is committed to increasing the diversity of who is represented on our stages and screens. Arts Council England have said that the “creative case” for diversity is part of the assessment process for National Portfolio Organisations in this funding round.
The recent Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation report on diversity and our “hideously white” industry is well timed and to be welcomed. It highlighted two findings which I think are particularly interesting: that “lack of representation on stage leads to a vicious cycle of BAME students feeling that the stage is not for them” and a “disparity between the desire of the theatre sector for change and the lack of practical implementation to make the change happen”.
At Theatre Royal Stratford East, we have been producing diverse work with a diverse workforce for diverse audiences for many years – both with plays and with our musical theatre initiative which has been running for more than 15 years. We believe that the more diverse the work is, the more excellent it strives to become. A white cast presenting Hamlet to a white audience works to some degree, but a culturally mixed cast playing to a diverse audience, proclaiming who they are and what this story means to them, will be far more interesting, and potentially groundbreaking on many levels. That is one of the USPs of the Broadway megahit Hamilton which is coming to London.
If we wanted to, we could embrace many of the foundation’s recommendations immediately. As artists, we love a problem, thrive at finding solutions and can make all sorts of impossible things happen. But as a sector we don’t employ enough people of colour in top jobs, or seek them out to cast, or commission diverse storytellers.
The media needs new blood to help us view and celebrate new ideas, our award systems are usually a whitewash, and we’re in a vicious cycle of believing that only white-centred stories are commercially possible. And regardless of any funding threats, those of us who take or have taken public money to make art have a duty to reflect the whole world that we live in. We need to allow people of colour to set the critical debate. We need to relearn our collective history and celebrate, with all our heart, work that is culturally inclusive. If we don’t, our art form will die in a pool of stagnated irrelevance. There is also a financial and creative imperative for our collective survival: we have to start connecting with our new Generation Z audience, post-millennials who are more mixed-raced and culturally connected than any before.
At a time when, as a nation, we are being fed fear and suspicion to divide and rule, it is more important than ever that we invest in and celebrate the complex and vibrant world we all belong to.
• Kerry Michael is artistic director of Theatre Royal Stratford East.
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