…. and you thought we were good at it!

On the back page of the Times Literary Supplement there's a column by "JC" of notes on topical literary issues. It isn't available online, alas. On April 17th, he asked the astonishing question "Why is the role of Othello withheld from white actors?" Well, it astonished me anyhow, and I didn't write back because I confidently expected that by the next issue, (it's a fortnightly) someone else surely would. But they didn't, and haven't since, except for one letter-writer who helpfully mentioned the last time he had in fact seen the role played by a white actor.

For the record, Othello was first performed in 1604. The first black actor, that we know of, to play the role was Ira Aldridge, in the 1820s – only took just over 200 years, then. Aldridge, an American, was plagued by prejudice in his homeland, emigrated to the UK, but found London almost as hostile – though to their credit, theatres and critics in the north of England and in Ireland were not – and had great successes touring in Europe, especially Russia.

Ira's daughter Amanda gave elocution lessons to the young Paul Robeson before he followed in her father's footsteps by playing Othello to critical acclaim in the 1930s. But for decades afterwards, the norm was still for the Moor to be played by a white actor in make-up, culminating in the risible navy-blue get-up of Laurence Olivier in the 1965 film. In 1967 I saw the play at Nottingham Playhouse with John Neville as Iago; the American actor Robert Ryan was playing Othello, and he was white too.

If one really has to spell it out: there are not that many black roles, let alone heroic starring roles, in classical theatre, and those few that exist have for generations been shamelessly annexed by European actors along with all the rest. JC, bless him, sounded genuinely aggrieved that this one great role was being "withheld" from white actors. His musings on the subject had, I think, been sparked by a recent production of Death and the King's Horseman, by Wole Soyinka, in which black actors "white up" to play stereotypical British colonials. Indeed there was an article in the Daily Telegraph by Tim Walker complaining of double standards and quoting an unnamed white actor who seems not to have heard of the concept of irony:

"Colour-blind casting seems to work only one way," complains a white actor who has made several appearances at the National. "Not only can we not play black characters, now we're not even allowed to play whites."

Aww, diddums. Never mind the concept of irony, he clearly can't understand the concept of historical context either. Or of payback. JC, Tim, Unnamed Thesp, do just take a moment to consider Ira Aldridge, reading what was meant to be a friendly critique, "In Othello (Aldridge) delivers the most difficult passages with a degree of correctness that surprises the beholder" – this of an artist whose linguistic gifts allowed him to perform roles in Russian – and maybe think about contenting yourselves with the 90% of the pie you still have?