Message Board Drama

Talkinbroadway.com. It's a favorite site of mine, but I'm amazed at how shortsighted some of the people who post there are.

Yesterday, someone started a thread about whether a production of Gypsy would work with an all-black cast. Gypsy, if you don't know, is kinda the grande dame of American musicals. It's based loosely on the life of Gyspy Rose Lee, the famous ecdysiast. The show really focuses on Gypsy's mother-saurus Rex, Rose. Here's a list of actresses who have played Rose: Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone.

So the question is, could someone like Tonya Pinkins play the role of Rose?

The obvious answer, to me, is FUCK YEAH! Even better, what about Jennifer Holliday?

Not everyone at Talkinbroadway shared my enthusiasm. Some people just wrote "No," without elaborating. Others went deeper. Or, rather, shallower.

Poster beb11572 was the most vocal opponent of casting black actors in the Gypsy leads. The crux of his/her/its article was that, because the characters in Gypsy are based on real people, it's wrong to cast people of different colors in their roles. Here's what s/he/it had to say:

Reinventing the race of real human beings goes beyond a fable ... it is theatre of the absurd.

Beb further challenged proponents of the idea by saying that, and forgive me for paraphrasing, if we're OK with black actors playing Rose or Gypsy, then we should be OK with a white actress playing the lead in an August Wilson play.

Here's why that argument sucks big donkey balls.

August Wilson's plays are ensconced in the African-American experience during the 20th Century. At their core, his plays are a statement on race in the United States. Personally, I can't see any reason to cast white actors in roles Wilson wrote as black. But if someone could justify the artistic choice, I'd buy it. I really don't think that's possible, though.

Gypsy is by no means a reflection on the white experience in America. It's barely about the actual life of Gypsy and her momma-dukes (who was a big lezzer, even though the musical puts her opposite a romantic leading man). Gypsy is a big, brassy musical that speaks to the human pitfall of blind ambition. I could be wrong here--but I don't think I am--but at the time Gypsy was created--the late 1950s, the latter end of what's known as the Golden Era of Broadway--there weren't a lot of musicals featuring black actors. Beyond burlesque and Vaudeville, what sorts of roles were available to black musical theater actors back then? I'm assuming they were in the vein of destitute & drugged-up beggars (e.g. Porgy and Bess, written by white dudes) or servants (e.g. Showboat, written by white dudes). Let me know if I'm wrong.

The case with most classic American musicals--at least in their original productions--was either no room at the inn for black actors, or room at the inn, but only if you're a cook or a maid. With a lot of musicals, the fact that the original casts were white or that the marginally notable historical people on which the characters are based were white makes little to no difference in today's society. It can be used, by the likes Beb from Talkinbroadway, as a means to exclude black (or any underrepresented ethnic group) actors from participating in revivals of the "classics." But when you come down to it, there are still way more opportunities for whites in the upper echelons of American commercial theater than there are for blacks, Latinos or Asian-Americans.

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: the real problem with American theater is that there are not enough diverse voices being heard. That extends to every level of production, but, most detrimentally, there are not enough playwrights of color being produced. Rather than reviving Gypsy for the 1,000th time, why not commission new musicals that speak to the situations of different races in modern America? The Color Purple is great, but how about something that shows black people as they're living today?

In the immediate future, Broadway can look forward to In the Heights and Passing Strange. In addition, it can hold its breath for yet another revival of Gypsy (the last one was three years ago, so don't get me started on the fact that shows like Raisin or Dreamgirls have yet to receive a single revival).

In conclusion, I'd like to extend an invitation to Talkinbroadway chatter beb11572 to please suck my white Irish tootsie roll.

Peace and love.