No reason why Lenny Henry can't be Othello
Oct 2 2008 By Terry Grimley, Arts Editor
As Lenny Henry points out, he’s black, he’s working class, and he’s from Dudley. But none of those are reasons why you can’t be a Shakespearean actor.
Certainly not nowadays, when the tradition of so-called “colour-blind” casting - in effect, any actor can be cast in any role - is a time-honoured tradition at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
For instance, black Birmingham-born actor Joe Dixon has been a big hit at Stratford this summer playing Bottom with a broad Brummie accent.
Birmingham-based actor Patrice Naiambana, who takes on the role of Othello for the RSC in a production opening in January, first joined the company a few years ago to play Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But in-between he was an imposing Earl of Warwick in the company’s acclaimed Histories.
Joe Dixon, a graduate of Castle Vale Comp and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, along with Ewen Cummins who is also in the RSC’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, is one of a remarkable generation of black actors who emerged from modest backgrounds in Birmingham in the 1980s.
Another example is Adrian Lester, who initially turned down a starring role with John Travolta in the feature film Primary Colors because he was due to play Othello at the National Theatre. Eventually he was persuaded by director Mike Nichols that the movie was too good to miss and was replaced as Othello by David Harewood - yet another Brummie.
Later Lester returned to the National Theatre to become the first black Henry V, having meanwhile played Hamlet under the direction of Peter Brook in Paris.
But in our time Othello is unique among Shakespeare’s roles in being the exclusive property of black actors. In pre-multicultural Britain it was normal for white actors to black-up. Olivier did a famous production (and film) in the 1960s and I remember seeing Donald Sinden giving what must have been one of the last blacked-up performances at Stratford in the 1970s. Now it would be completely taboo.
Of course, this is logically inconsistent and some may well hope that eventually all parts really will be fair game for all actors. But we haven’t got there yet, and there is the pragmatic argument that black actors have a far more limited range of plum roles than their white colleagues (blind casting being much less the norm outside Shakespeare, in more naturalistic forms of theatre).
But the fact that there were relatively few black actors until recent times means that there is a tradition of casting Othello from outside the classical theatre tradition. One of the most celebrated examples is the American singer and actor Paul Robeson, who famously played the part in Stratford in the 1950s. More recently, Trevor Nunn cast the opera singer Willard White opposite Ian McKellen’s Iago.
So, leaving aside the cliché about clowns wanting to play Hamlet, it shouldn’t really seem such a stretch to see Lenny Henry playing Othello. Leaving aside the issue of race, there has always been a fascination about slightly incongruous people playing Shakespeare which does no harm at the box office. A famous example in Birmingham in the 1960s was the American actor Richard Chamberlain, then the heart-throb star of TV soap Dr Kildare, playing Hamlet at Birmingham Rep.
Then of course there was the recent excitement around Dr Who star David Tennant playing the same role in Stratford (though that’s a slightly different case as Tennant already has a serious RSC track record).
An intriguing aspect of Lenny Henry’s Othello is that the production is being directed by Barrie Rutter, in a co-production between West Yorkshire Playhouse and his own company, Northern Broadsides. Rutter likes to root his Shakespeare in earthy northern accents. The question is, will a Dudley accent be northern enough?
