SA Theatre Production


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Posted by Mike Dennis on November 27, 2010 at 10:17:49 user MTD.

In the review section of today’s Daily Telegraph there is an article about the forthcoming Bristol Old Vic production of the ‘musical’ of Swallows and Amazons, and it does nothing to dispel my concerns voiced in a previous post if anything it amplifies them.

The writer Neil Hannon says of the book that he “… read it to myself and skipped the boring bits.” So clearly he did not approach his task as an enthusiast or childhood reader. Later in the article, despite references to the recent Roland Chambers biography, the book is dismissed as ‘pure fiction’ and the producer Tom Morris refers to it being set in the “twenties”. None of this bodes well.

After the previous posts about the production I downloaded the Old Vic press pack, and the photographic material confirmed what the theatre’s Website appeared to suggest and similarly the photographs accompanying the Telegraph article – one of the main child characters is played by a black actor.

Before I go any further, I don’t want to end up in the kind of exchanges that appeared here after a previous discussion regarding the use of language to describe the pearls in PD. My argument is not about race issues but representation of characters in a long established work.

My point is that none of the characters in SA is black and to have one of them portrayed by a black actor is miss-representation of the work, just as using a white actor to play Othello in Shakespeare’s Othello is.

The end of the article describes how the work was tried out in London to “… a class of inner city kids…” though it has to be said they reacted favourably – to the pirates.

So here we have it, a work describing children on holiday in the Lake District in the 1930s and with the only music references being to sea shanties has been bastardised (using the word in one of its correct non-offensive senses) as a musical in order to appeal to a multi-cultural audience who require their entertainment to be dumbed-down.

I assume that, as the work is in copyright that the trustees of TARS have approved this production?

For those who want to see how this inevitable ‘car crash’ theatre work came about there will be a documentary on the Freeview TV channel More4 on December 11th at 8.00pm.


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