Integrated casting is the code phrase for casting black actors in what were once thought of as white roles. It can result in members of one family, say the Capulets or the Macbeths, being of different colours without, as it were, anyone noticing it. I am not talking about modern plays in which black actors play lawyers, shopkeepers or thieves; these are roles in which colour is irrelevant. But the moment any attempt is made to discuss the issue rationally, there are accusations of racism. As a result many producers and directors are scared to give their opinions publicly, though I know of many who refuse to cast against colour.
The case for integrated casting is that if the acting is good enough, the colour is not noticeable. The reality is that the colour of an actor's skin is as noticeable as his height, his weight and his age. Casting is, in part, a matter of appearance: Judi Dench, who was a splendid Juliet in her youth, could not play Juliet now because she would instantly be seen as too old for the part. She could still play it on radio, because her voice is flexible enough to carry conviction. Miriam Margoyles's miraculous voice is a silken escape ladder allowing her to flee her ample figure and inhabit slim blondes, skinny models and young girls. If she wished, she could be Betjeman's Joan Hunter Dunne with "the speed of a swallow and the grace of a boy." But only on radio. Good actress as she is, she would lack conviction on the stage.
The world is full of actors who are unsuitable for certain roles because of their appearance. Skin colour is simply one of the factors. Not that it matters if the play is set in Illyria, whose inhabitants may have been of hues unknown to modern eyes. What matters colour in Ephesus where dwell sorcerers, witches, prating mountebanks and many suchlike liberties of sin? Places such as the wood near Athens, the sea coast of Bohemia and the Forest of Arden may have a nominal connection with geography-but their real location is in the imagination.
It was incredibly stupid of Richard Ingrams to object to a black actor playing the role of Mr Snow in Nicholas Hytner's production of Carousel, on the grounds that black people did not live in 19th century Maine fishing villages. Did 19th century fishing villagers in Maine break into harmonious choruses of "You'll Never Walk Alone"? Was it commonplace for young men to be sent back to earth by God's assistants to complete unfinished business? To swallow all that but to blench at a black man is ridiculous.
But in Nicholas Hytner's production of Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer it caused me great misgivings to see a black actor play an 18th century Shropshire gentleman and black girls inhabit an English village. Many plays reflect how things were, and this is too valuable a heritage to be distorted. The few black men and women living in England in the mid-18th century did not own land in Shropshire or frolic in villages. England was up to its neck in the slave trade and it is as false a picture of black history as it is of English history to pretend otherwise.
Trying not to notice someone's skin colour can become in itself a kind of racism, or can at least deny the realities of ethnic and racial conflict. I would, for example, be angry with a play which showed an actor who appeared by looks or speech patterns to be Jewish-whether he is or not is immaterial-playing, say, an English member of parliament before 1858. The struggle for the right to sit in parliament, led by Macaulay, was long and hard and should not be denied, even by inference.
A related problem arises with integrated casting in modern plays. A black actor is among the conscripts in the current National Theatre production of Chips with Everything. It would appear to an innocent playgoer that Arnold Wesker-most ardent liberal and dedicated opponent of racism-had ignored the well attested fact that a young black recruit in the 1950s would have been subject to at least some pressures or taunts relating to his skin colour. The absence of any awareness of this in the production is an injustice to Wesker and a distortion of the play's business.
It follows that certain black actors are excluded from certain classical roles. But then, so are a number of white actors for the same reason. A play set in Nigeria could not work with a white actor playing a village elder. It would add ambiguities not intended by the author. But I would have no problem with a black Hamlet. Hamlet is a state of mind, not a report on the early Danish social structure. The same applies to a black Lear, though in both cases the problem of close family members with different racial characteristics does not simply disappear.
The history plays are different. The court, the Eastcheap and Gloucestershire scenes in Henry IV bring the England of the period, its power structure and its social hierarchy blazingly to life. That vitality comes solely from the characters Shakespeare created, and he got them from the streets and taverns of his time. We know their antecedents and their descendants. When Hal, Falstaff, Nym and Pistol, Mistress Quickly and Justice Shallow walk on stage they do not arrive without luggage; they have come from somewhere. Make Hal or Falstaff black and, no matter how well they are acting, how fine their speech, they have not come from 15th century England. An intrusive American accent would have the same effect, even if professors could prove that their English was nearer to Shakespeare's than ours. Accuracy bows before truth.
