Much Ado About Nothing - RSC

Maybe they couldn't find enough English-speaking actors from Messina for an authentic cast, so they're relying on audience members using their imagination?

Seriously, as long as they are skilled professional actors, I think most of us can cope with things like siblings or parents and children being played by actors of different races, women playing men's parts, disabled actors, etc. I can't see why that's divisive - surely the opposite?

Sorry cirque I misread your post. Are you saying it's divisive because the cast is mostly black and you think that's positive discrimination? That's possible, but I don't think it would be divisive, just redressing the balance.

There are a couple of other possibilities:

It's been cast this way because race is part of the concept for this production - hard to tell from the info on the website.

It was blind cast and these were the best actors for the parts.

That didn’t much bother me either, Nunn explained why he did it - those complaining were too young to remember that he was responsible for some of the first colour-blind casting in Shakespeare. The risk the RSC is running is that by employing a black director and apparently specifying a predominantly black cast it could look like tokenism given that the upper echelons of the RSC are entirely white. I think we can dismiss the idea it was blind cast, as we can dismiss their previous claim they wanted their casts to “look like England”.

This production does however feature some gender-blind casting.

I am for colour and gender-blind casting, but as oxfordsimon eloquently puts it the execution is what matters. I always say paying attention to the story needs to come first before putting your own spin on it so that it makes sense

You only have to look at the Company revival to see the effort they made to swap the genders around.

There's also those times when you had a Doran's African Julius Caesar and the Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy set in a women's prison. Again those shows didn't stop with the casting. The acting and direction made for some of the best interpretations of Shakespeare I've ever seen.

The blurb and casting for this Much Ado About Nothing barely tells me anything really. A futuristic setting were most of the characters are black. Entirely plausible.

I'm only happy that the RSC isn't virtue signalling and selling this production on its casting.

Only when the show opens will we see the director's intentions and whether they work or not.

Though what raises doubts in this show for me is that the company has to go to the owner of Simon-Hartman London to design the costumes for this show. Seriously RSC, you spend the last few years fundraising a costume workshop, putting time and effort to host exhibitions celebrating the best in costumes you created over the decades. And yet you show no confidence in your own designers to deliver costumes for this futuristic setting.

www.simon-hartman.com/

One example is Troilus and Cressida where one of the key themes is the toxic masculinity of the Greek camp - if you cast Agamemnon as a woman (as Greg Doran did) it undercuts this. 

However not as massive an imposition on the text as when Anthony Sher played Malvolio as some sort of insane Greek Orthodox priest.

This production is set in a futuristic dystopian world. Casting choices could fit in with the context of the staging. In fact, I imagine with the casting of Borachio, it probably relates to the setting choices a fair bit.

There was a wonderful production by Public Theater in NY. It's set in Messina, a black neighbourhood in New York. It's genuinely wonderful:



Much Ado is my favourite Shakespeare play and I'm really excited for this production! 

This will be broadcast on BBC4 later this year.

Went to last Thursday's matinee with low expectations after seeing a few 2* reviews but found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable production. Well worth the hassle of the trip from London.

It used to a cheap and easy journey. Now there are no direct trains and no suitable cheap "advance" rail tickets. As a result I find a only rarely make the trip to Stratford these days.

On BBC4 next Sunday.

sadly overproduced, grim, and defiantly unfunny.

Turned on by pure chance. Some sort of dated disco scene. Not for me. Seems to have appealed to middle-aged middle-class London-based newspaper reviewers though.