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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 13:17:22 GMT
I haven't seen this production and have never seen the actor in question in any other role. I have no idea whether he has the acting skills to carry it off. "The actor in question" has a name - Leo Wringer. His biography is extensive. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 13:22:43 GMT
”Our approach to casting is to select the most exciting individual for each role”. What does that actually mean ? In reality they cast each role separately but they also are working to meet an overall quota - at least the NT are explicit about that. I've seen some very unexciting performers in RSC productions. Is that even a crime? If everyone in a production is extremely exciting, the production is at risk of being hyperactive, and some roles call for being stolid or unobtrusive. I wouldn't want a really exciting Rosencrantz, for instance. (None of that bears on Letts' remark in his review, which is appalling.) Exciting (how they can affect others) not excitable (how they are themselves). |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 13:27:11 GMT
I can't for the life of me imagine, in a situation where a white actor was thought to be underperforming, a reviewer would write "He was a bit sh*t. The RSC have let themselves down again by their slavish devotion to pale skin" or such like.
It seems Wringer has been attacked twice in Letts' review - his performance has been judged to be substandard because of his race, and he has been accused of only gaining the role in the first place because of his race (at the expense of someone with the right skintone). Vile stuff.
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Post by dani on Apr 8, 2018 13:28:05 GMT
I've seen some very unexciting performers in RSC productions. Is that even a crime? If everyone in a production is extremely exciting, the production is at risk of being hyperactive, and some roles call for being stolid or unobtrusive. I wouldn't want a really exciting Rosencrantz, for instance. (None of that bears on Letts' remark in his review, which is appalling.) Exciting (how they can affect others) not excitable (how they are themselves). That is an interesting semantic point, but actors who are genuinely exciting aren't the norm. |
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Post by zahidf on Apr 8, 2018 13:44:10 GMT
I can't for the life of me imagine, in a situation where a white actor was thought to be underperforming, a reviewer would write "He was a bit sh*t. The RSC have let themselves down again by their slavish devotion to pale skin" or such like. It seems Wringer has been attacked twice in Letts' review - his performance has been judged to be substandard because of his race, and he has been accused of only gaining the role in the first place because of his race (at the expense of someone with the right skintone). Vile stuff. Exactly. Its not even important whether the performance is good or not. Letts decided a black man isnt suited to the role and decided to bring in his dodgy politics to it |
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Post by altamont on Apr 8, 2018 13:48:42 GMT
And having seen the play, Leo Wringer's performance is perfectly fine
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Post by foxa on Apr 8, 2018 13:50:18 GMT
I think Letts is such a crummy critic he wouldn't know how to dissect a performance to explain how it could be better.
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Post by foxa on Apr 8, 2018 13:55:57 GMT
I do wonder about the state of theatre criticism. It isn't unusual to find posters on this forum or bloggers writing in a more insightful, helpful, interesting way than some of the big print critics.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 14:04:49 GMT
And does he say 'again'? So who else is he thinking of? What about a list Mr Letts of black actors who shouldn’t have been given their roles. The 'again' was particularly nasty - "You just can't go to theatre these days without seeing those black guys". |
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Post by zahidf on Apr 8, 2018 15:04:34 GMT
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Post by bellboard27 on Apr 8, 2018 15:36:13 GMT
Letts is confused. Someone can’t be cast because of their race if the casting is colour blind.
Does anyone know what the RSC casting policy is? From their statement they suggest it is not colour blind but that might be a misinterpretation.
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Post by Phantom of London on Apr 8, 2018 15:59:46 GMT
For a newspaper targeted at the white middle class and has a history of let’s say being bigoted, they even backed the fascist Black Shirts in the 1930’s. Quentin not only decided to criticise his acting, but was affronted by the colour of his skin. Quentin Letts doesn’t review an awful lot, he isn’t as prolific as Michael Billlington or Dominic Cavendish but he has a history of going to subsidised theatre, to shows where he can be easily offended, so to browbeat the notion of a subsidy. Interestingly he never goes to the Art Council subsidised Royal and Dernsgate Theatre, in Northampton - I wonder why? I have a feelings this one isn’t going to go away and the RSC should remove him off their guest list, as should other artistic directors. Conversely the Mail on Sunday chief critic Robert Gore Langton form what little I have read of him, I would say he is the opposite of Quentin Letts and is very good indeed. |
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Post by zahidf on Apr 8, 2018 16:20:06 GMT
Letts is confused. Someone can’t be cast because of their race if the casting is colour blind. Does anyone know what the RSC casting policy is? From their statement they suggest it is not colour blind but that might be a misinterpretation. His complaing seems to be that its wrong for it to be colour blind: the RSC should have just cast a white actor for the role |
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Post by bellboard27 on Apr 8, 2018 16:35:04 GMT
Letts is confused. Someone can’t be cast because of their race if the casting is colour blind. Does anyone know what the RSC casting policy is? From their statement they suggest it is not colour blind but that might be a misinterpretation. His complaing seems to be that its wrong for it to be colour blind: the RSC should have just cast a white actor for the role Re-reading the article that is not clear. It seems to imply (on “ticking an inclusiveness box”) that the casting choice is not colour blind. Also the RSC response does not state that that is their policy. Hence my question if anyone knows. I fully agree with you on supporting colour blind casting. |
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Post by lichtie on Apr 8, 2018 17:04:55 GMT
Letts is an obnoxious example of the I'm not a racist but tribe. He'll even vociferously express antiracism on odd occasions. But his columns belie his statements. Sadly he's not remotely the worst of the Mail's stable of opinion writers. Also people here seems to be confusing anti-discrimination law. Positive discrimination can only ever work as a tie-breaker where there are equally qualified candidates in the case of an application for employment. Doing otherwise would leave the employer open to action. (Note it's different for things like training places, but that is clearly not the case here).
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 17:33:33 GMT
And having seen the play, Leo Wringer's performance is perfectly fine Agreed. Plus look at how the character is described in the text ...  |
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Post by ellie1981 on Apr 8, 2018 18:51:19 GMT
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Post by lynette on Apr 8, 2018 19:05:44 GMT
And having seen the play, Leo Wringer's performance is perfectly fine Agreed. Plus look at how the character is described in the text ... Brilliant, xanderl, shows up Mr Letts as guy who mouths off without doing his homework or he would have noticed this. |
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Post by jadnoop on Apr 9, 2018 10:07:33 GMT
I wonder how comments like Letts' will be viewed in the future.
We're living through a period in which we finally move slowly away from some of the biases that exist within the arts. It seems odd that all the phrases that pop up ('SJW', 'PC gone mad', 'diversity for the sake of it', etc.) assume that shifting towards better representation is a bad thing. But the underlying implication (that white or male performers on stage or screen should remain the default) only really 'makes sense' from within the context of how things have been.
I presume that when they first started allowing women on stage, there were similar discussions about whether this was political correctness gone mad, or whether one role or another was given to a woman simply to fill some quota (despite the fact that Dave was great in the role last year). It might have once been considered necessary to mention in reviews that Juliet was being performed by a woman, but the status quo has shifted so fundamentally that you get dramas about how weird it was to not have had female actors back then.
Assuming that things continue to shift towards greater access, within a few decades people will wonder why these discussions were even necessary.
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Post by sf on Apr 9, 2018 10:45:25 GMT
I think Letts is such a crummy critic he wouldn't know how to dissect a performance to explain how it could be better. It's not just that he's a crummy critic, though, is it? That review also reveals, in case we didn't already know, that he's a festering turd of a human being. |
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Post by zahidf on Apr 15, 2018 22:59:40 GMT
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Post by mrbarnaby on Apr 16, 2018 4:25:36 GMT
I’m confused.. is he saying the actor is crap and would only have been cast to tick a box .. or that casting any black actor in that role is purely to tick a box?
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Post by lynette on May 5, 2018 22:26:59 GMT
Well I’ve seen this now and I don’t know what Letts was going on about. I honestly don’t. There are black actors a plenty playing heirs to Lords, a mistress of somebody or other, bods various... all good..
I really enjoyed this. It made me laugh out loud which I don’t do a lot in the theatre ( I think Noises Off was top laughs out loud for me back in the day) beautifully played by Sophie Stanton as Mrs Rich. Jolly set with a nod back to how I expect things were done and a nod forward to a kind of panto thing, jolly music, jolly lighting, jolly dancing. They should revive all this women's work, this Mary Pix who seems to have been the Alan Ayckborne and Sonia Friedman of her day, both a writer and a producer. This play was first put on the same season as The Way of the World, it says in the programme. Having just seen TWOTW at the Donmar I think they must have had a jolly good time at the Theatre back in those days.
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Post by lichtie on May 15, 2018 8:08:50 GMT
Saw this at the weekend, and I'd echo Lynette, great fun, and the audience as a whole had a great time. At least in my head, this is how I imagine restoration comedy being played...
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Post by showgirl on May 30, 2018 18:30:26 GMT
This was fantastic fun & the Swan is such a great setting. I think it's a case of the excellent production making the play look better than it is, but it's certainly the equal of the better-known work of many of Mary Pix's male contemporaries & I agree with Lynette that we should see more of the women's work.
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