This has been a point of contention on Broadway (and Hollywood) for a very long time. I recall there were almost strikes when Jonathan Pryce was cast as an Asian in Miss Saigon, over actual Asian actors.
Recently, the issue came up here on FR when NBC did a live performance of The Sound of Music, and Audra McDonald was cast as Mother Abbess.
In that thread, I posted the following:
Although I love Audra McDonald ( A wonderful Broadway performer ), I just cannot help but wonder... would Austria in the 1930’s really have a BLACK Mother Abbes?Since this has been mentioned several times now, let me just say...
When it comes to musical theater, there already comes a certain expectation of "willful suspension of disbelief," if only that people do not break out into song and dance in the middle of a serious conversation in real life.
Given that we already agree to suspend belief at the theater door, what's wrong with looking past the race of the actor for the character, too, and just enjoy the talented performance?
Why suspend the belief of choreographed interactions, but not anything else?
I'll summarize the mainline rebuttals below:
The Sound of Music is supposed to be historically correct.Suspension of disbelief deals with fiction not history.
Heck why stop there?? Why not played by Mick Jagger???
Me...
Suspension of disbelief deals with portrayal, too.
Take Oliver!, for instance. Was Dickens' London an accurate portrayal of Elizabethan times? Did the street sellers sing and dance in unison all time, wondering about "Who will buy?"
Same for Les Miserables and Paris. Only I couldn't see Russell Crowe as Javert, and not because he wasn't French.
We could go on. How about how Carrie Underwood wasn't speaking with an Austrian accent? She supposedly grew up on that mountain by Salzberg, right? But we are willing to suspend that fact in the storytelling...
There’s a difference in hearing something that we know doesn’t match, and seeing something that we know doesn’t match.
Oliver was not about a historical family — this was.
Carrie wasn’t there for her acting skills but for her singing skills.
I hope they reciprocate and give her a part in the family in Oprah’s live for television remake of a Color Purple???
Me...
Oliver was not about a historical family — this was.
True, but we're talking about the character of the Mother Abbess, not the von Trapps. The Mother Superior was likely a fictionalized character, albiet positively white, notwithstanding that there was a real Mother Superior at the Nonnberg Abbey.
But let's do talk about the von Trapps. The thing about musical theater is that beautiful music should not be off-limits to others to perform, just because of their race. That's why most people look past the race of the performer when they play a role.
For instance, what if someone tried to produce an all-black The Sound Of Music? Personally, I think that would be more accepted than the notion of an all-white Porgy and Bess, but that's because the African-American community zealously protects "black" arts, while simultaneously demanding entry into the arts of others. Still, white performers do sing the music of Gershwin, but just in concert and not in a staged production.
And then there were the Shakespearean men who played women's roles. Somehow, the audience of that time was able to look past that.
So, for me, if there is a libertarian aspect to this it is that access to the arts should not limit highly talented individuals who do not "look like" the characters they are portraying. Is that real "white privilege" because so many historical figures were European, and so only white people can portray them in musical theater?
-PJ
I do agree to an extent. I am an opera fan, and I have been seeing mixed-race casts for decades. I do not know why it bothers me less in opera. Maybe it is something akin to what you alluded to with the unreality of Dickensian London in Oliver!. Operas are so over-the-top unreal to start with that I do not expect reality. A black soprano in a white part is no less accurate than a fat white woman playing a slim beautiful woman dying of consumption.
I think part of the reason I am bothered by Hamilton is that so many of its fans are young libs who probably don't know squat about history and will come away with the sense that something happened that really didn't.