More than Drama at the National Theatre

Published: 16/04/2009

Drama overdone: Whiting Up at the National
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Here comes another production with more drama raised outside than in the National theatre. In its notorious production of England People Very Nice, successive waves of ‘ethnic’ immigrants into Bethnal Green are given the full on un-PC treatment for comic effect. The script is brilliant but the writer and director are surprisingly naïve about the virulently anti-migrant habitat- not really much of a laugh. The same artlessness and lack of awareness is evident with the new play Death and the King’s Horseman by the Nigerian Nobel prize winner, Wole Soyinka.

It is an exploration of colonialism using the story telling conventions of Nigeria where they whiten up black faces to represent Imperial masters. The director Rufus Norris has borrowed the idea, to stay true, he says, to the play’s Yoruba roots. Many may ask why it is OK to tolerate this kind of racial caricature when even our royalty does not get away with ‘blacking up’ for entertainment. It is a fair question, burning for some. Black actors chalking up to represent ignorant white rulers is unacceptable negative stereotyping.

The white objectors need to be taken seriously. However, whitening up, though offensive, is not like blacking up which has a long history linked to slavery and the systemic demonisation of blackness through centuries in the US and UK. Al Jonson, Bing Crosby, the Minstrels and others turned their white faces into grotesque visages, part brute, part comic, the archetypal ‘stupid nigger’. The devil and Beelzebub are painted black. White faces, even painted ones, are never the symbol of evil, nor is there a history of exploitation of whites by blacks.

But what if the roles in no way debase or humiliate any race? Is it OK then to white or black up? As Alec Guinness did in a Passage to India or Laurence Olivier, when he was Othello. These talented actors inhabited the parts and performed well enough, yet were condemned by people of colour because so many of their own actors don’t get the chances they deserve. Equally, many white Britons cannot believe in a black actor- however brilliant- playing a Shakespearean English king and could a pale, blonde, blue-eyed man carry off Shylock?

Considering the ongoing ferment over race and roles, it was unwise not to use white actors in Soyinka’s play. The arty like mischief and our National Theatre appears to be turning into a theatrical agent provocateur, knowingly inciting people to emote which presumably ups media attention and sales. Death and the King’s Horseman deserves to be seen in its own right. Instead it will now draw in crowds eagerly seeking a row. What a pity.

Published in Evening Standard