PC realism, new thespian genre

The Guardian sets the stall: “…There is a groundswell of opinion proposing that [LGBT] parts should be given only to actors who identify as LGBT.”

This goes without saying for the actor Richard E Grant, but as far as he’s concerned it doesn’t go far enough. He passionately believes that characters who are black, homosexual, disabled or from any other minority, should be played by actors from those backgrounds.

“The transgender movement and the #MeToo movement means how can you justify heterosexual actors playing gay characters?” says Grant, with the characteristic thespian inability to string an unscripted sentence together. “We are in a historic moment.”

We are indeed. And, may I add as a lifelong champion of political correctness, this historic moment must be embraced with both arms – and also both legs, if one is agile enough. However, certain points need clarifying.

One suspects there are more black actors than black roles, so finding a perfect racial fit wouldn’t be hard. The same goes for homosexuals – agents’ books are full of them, so no problem there.

Thus PC realism can still be achieved with ease, even though the demand for both black and homosexual roles is constantly growing. So we are no longer prepared to tolerate outrages like Sir Lawrence Olivier in blackface pretending to be Othello.

However, some unscrupulous straight actors may claim to be homosexual just to land a cushy part – we are all sinners, after all. Hence a validating sex act may become obligatory during a casting session, but this is strictly a technical issue to sort out in due course.

However, I anticipate a problem with casting an actor for the role of Richard III who, courtesy of Shakespeare, is traditionally portrayed as a hunchback. This would require a narrow specialisation because, other than Quasimodo, I can’t think offhand of any other hunchbacked roles.

Perhaps that’s why persons thus deformed tend to shy away from the acting profession, correctly anticipating that their career prospects would be limited. That may create a potential casting conundrum, for it’s now morally wrong to use actors with normal vertebral geometry for such roles.

Perhaps, if guaranteed a starring role in the Shakespeare drama, some actors would be willing to undergo a simple, if irreversible, surgical procedure. Worth investigating, that.

Then one has to think – and decry! – such abominations as John Hurt cast as The Elephant Man and Daniel Day-Lewis as a cerebral palsy sufferer in My Left Foot.

Alas, casting directors looking for PC realism would have had a mighty problem on their hands, especially in the former case. It’s a safe assumption that poor sods with skulls like John Merrick’s are unlikely to become actors.

Cerebral palsy is another potential disqualifying condition for thespians, although Michael J Fox may provide the solution. His disease is severe Parkinson’s, not cerebral palsy, and he retains command of all his limbs. Still, that’s close enough, and next time there’s a need for an actor who can only control his left foot, Mr Fox must be considered.

However, I’ve always championed not only political correctness, but also fairness. So it’s with a heavy heart that I have to admit that this commitment to PC realism doesn’t quite work both ways.

Every play I’ve seen this season on the formerly respectable London stage has featured transvestite, transracial and transsexual cross-casting galore.

The latest play that offended my quest for fairness was Ravens. It’s about the 1972 chess match between Fischer and Spassky, a subject close to my heart as a former chess player.

Quite apart from its unfairness, the play is ineptly acted, poorly directed and atrociously written.

A playwright writing on this subject should at least have taken the trouble to find out that a multi-game chess contest between two players is called a match, not a tournament. And his dialogues are singularly dull and amateurish.

But my main gripe is one I mentioned earlier. The part of Nikolai Krogius, a burly Siberian grandmaster, was played by a dainty black woman who wouldn’t do a good job even playing a dainty black woman.

It’s not as if the part was rewritten to accommodate a woman – not at all. The black actress wore a man’s suit, sported a short (if not quite man’s) haircut and implicitly insisted on being accepted as a Siberian chap. That was pushing make-believe way beyond breaking point.

Then there was Fred Kramer, the macho minder assigned by the US Chess Federation to babysit Fischer. His part was played by a short woman wearing a ginger wig and trying, pathetically, to adopt shoulder-slapping male mannerisms.

Confusingly, the same actress also played another role, that of Fischer’s older female friend. One was led to accept that Fred Kramer had undergone a sex-change operation between the scenes, even though the available recovery time probably wouldn’t have been long enough.

The part of Vince Lombardi, the Italian-American grandmaster cum priest, was played by a black man, even though I have it on good authority that there’s no dearth of white actors in London. And even one of Italian extraction wouldn’t be hard to find.

There must have been an artistic message communicated there somewhere, but it escaped me. Was it a hint that a part of Lombardi was black? His heart perhaps? No, that couldn’t be it.

Once again, I’m all for PC typecasting, and Stanislavsky with his system can go boil an egg. But if only black men can play black roles, only homosexuals are fit to impersonate homosexuals, and only cripples can be convincing cripples, one struggles to justify a black woman – or even a black man – playing a white male, or in this case two white males (the actor who was Lombardi in one scene became Henry Kissinger in another).

Still, I have only myself to blame. Fascinated by the subject of Ravens, I bought the tickets without bothering to check the cast. So it was myself that I was cursing as we rushed for the exit after Act I. Never again.