This month, a new production of “Romeo and Juliet” opened on London’s West End. It stars Tom Holland, a talented young actor perhaps most famous for being one of the fifteen people to play Spider-Man over the last couple of decades, and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, an accomplished stage actress.
And people on the internet are losing their minds.
“Why is Hollywood obsessed with re-writing history?” tweeted conservative activist Brigitte Gabriel, apparently under the mistaken impression that London’s West End is located in Hollywood and that “Romeo and Juliet” is a true story.
“But the character is white,” wrote another brain genius, referring to the character who is Italian. “This is the worst casting ever for Juliet,” wrote another person who has clearly never seen a high school production of the play.
The outrage, of course, is because the actress playing Juliet is black. The internet has labeled her a “DEI hire” from a “woke” theatre company. And as much as I wish I could tell you that this outrage is from just a handful of fringe racists, the situation has gotten so out of hand that the company has had to issue a statement asking the public to please stop abusing this poor woman. Additionally, more than 800 black actors signed off an open letter condemning this abuse, which was published in The Guardian.
Not to trot out my bonafides, but I’ve written a couple of plays that received full productions, a few more that received staged readings, and I served as the general manager of a playhouse for two years. I feel qualified to weigh in on this abject stupidity.
First things first, if this production were keeping true to the standards of Shakespeare’s era, the role of Juliet would be played by a man in drag, something I’m guessing would be even more objectionable to the lunatics raging about this play.
Secondly, I’ve seen maybe one or two Shakespeare productions in my life that actually held true to the time and place Shakespeare intended. Directors love taking Shakespeare in new directions, probably because they’re sick of Shakespeare. A buddy of mine actually saw a production of “Hamlet” that opened with the sound of helicopters flying overhead, causing a sleeping Hamlet to leap to his feet screaming and brandishing a combat knife because he was having a ‘Nam flashback.
There are so, so many reinterpretations and parodies that exist of “Romeo and Juliet.” Aside from “West Side Story,” there have been movies based on “Romeo and Juliet” that feature rival pizza restaurants, star-crossed leprechauns, zombies, and garden gnomes. The text is not exactly sacrosanct.
You might think I’m missing the forest for the trees, but the point is this: there’s no plausible deniability here. The mass outrage over this casting is just pure, unadulterated racism. And not just any racism, but old school 1960s pouring-ketchup-on-a-guy-at-a-Woolworth’s-lunch-counter-sit-in racism.
I’m not under the Pollyanna-ish impression that this kind of racism is something new, but up until the last decade or so, it seemed like racists had some understanding that they should be ashamed, or at least be pragmatic enough to not voice their opinions in public. That doesn’t seem to be the case any longer.
Sure, most of the racists realize there’s at least one word they shouldn’t say. That’s why they have their stand-ins. “Thug” used to be a pretty popular one, but it’s increasingly been replaced by “woke” and “DEI.” When we hear these words used as insults, we should mentally replace them with the word the person wanted to use.
To paraphrase The Bard, a slur by any other name still stinks.
