The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich - RSC

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

I think Letts is such a crummy critic he wouldn't know how to dissect a performance to explain how it could be better.

The 'again' was particularly nasty - "You just can't go to theatre these days without seeing those black guys".

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

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).

The directors have responded to his review:

www.rsc.org.uk/news/the-rsc-responds-to-the-daily-mails-review-of-the-fantastic-follies-of-mrs-rich?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialSignIn&utm_content=The+Fantastic+Follies+of+Mrs+Rich


Edit: oops, sorry it was already posted.

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.

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.