Richard III, Race, and the Royal Family

Usually, I would jump at the chance of seeing a performance of Richard III, it’s my favourite Shakespeare play by a long way. I enjoy both the Laurence Olivier and Ian McKellen film adaptations as well. Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard was very interesting. So, as the play was running at my local theatre, The Rose in Kingston upon Thames, you’d think I’d have bought tickets straight away, however, I paused.

The reason I paused is that the play is staring Adjoa Andoh in the title role, she is also directing the play. Andoh is a British actor and director of English and Ghanaian ancestry, best known for portraying a highly fictionalised version of George III’s consort, Queen Charlotte in the woke wet dream Bridgeton. She is also known as a prolific “re-imaginer”  of Shakespeare’s works on stage.       

The idea of a medieval English king being played by a black woman doesn’t worry me in and of itself. One of the great things about Shakespeare’s plays is that they are very adaptable. Although set in particular places and times Shakespeare’s plays deal with universal themes, so changing various elements is not only ok, but it can also be very interesting. You can set them in the time they were written, or the time and place they are set in, or any time and place you like. McKellen’s film sets the play in the 1930/40s Britain, with the Wars of the Roses shown as a civil war with machine guns, tanks, and aircraft and Richard dressed in an English version of SS uniform by the end. I think it is a great pity that Akira Kurosawa never did a film adaptation of Richard III as he did with King Lear/Ran and Macbeth/Throne of Blood. Toshiro Mifune would have made a wonderful King Richard.

If someone puts on a production of Romeo and Juliet with a cast made up of entirely of, let’s say, Chinese lesbian dwarves on roller skates dressed as punks that doesn’t stop another company putting on a production true to the original performances, in late Elizabethan dress with young men playing female roles (it was illegal to have women on stage in England until Charles II’s time). You could even be really bold and cast a young man as Romeo, a young woman as Juliet and set the play in 16^th century Verona. Different productions can give different perspectives, or they can be a complete artsie-fartsie dog’s breakfast, it doesn’t matter.  The original text remains unaffected, and any number of ludicrous productions don’t diminish it. It’s not like painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa.

Shakespeare was an Englishman, and the plays are English literature in both the linguistic and national sense. His works are a huge part of our culture, but they are certainly not the exclusive cultural property of the English, or even of the English-speaking peoples. I mentioned Kurosawa’s film adaptations, where two plays by a long dead Englishman formed the basis for two classics of 20^th century Japanese cinema. There are other examples, like West Side Story, which is based on Romeo and Juliet, Forbidden Planet/The Tempest, The Lion King/Hamlet, the list goes on. Although Shakespeare was himself “inspired by” (that is to say, nicked stories from) older sources, it is through his versions that we come to know these stories.

So no, the casting and “re-imagining” didn’t worry me. Not even the idea of having an historical figure who was certainly male and white played by a black female. Although Richard III is one of Shakespeare’s history plays, it’s not a documentary and is far from 100% historically accurate. While race and gender swapping historical characters in films and TV can be a problem, as so many folk do gain a goodly portion of their historical knowledge and attitudes from the screen, the same isn’t really true of theatre, especially with such a well known play.

What did give me pause was the current context, as always context is king. Andoh playing Richard comes at a time of relentless pushing of the broader BLM inspired agenda in what seems to be in every sphere of life. Here in the UK, I am becoming seriously worried that black actors will burn out. Given the percentage of our population that is of Afro-Caribbean ancestry (about 5%) black actors and performers must be working flat out to populate the adverts alone, not to mention characters on soaps, comedies, dramas, presenters, quiz show hosts, newsreaders etc. You could be forgiven for thinking that the UK was not 5%, but 50% black or more if all you judged by was the current TV output. This is also true in the theatres of course, and the cultural world generally. After Richard III, The Rose is putting on a production of Lord of the Flies, judging by the poster, the cast is not white, or male. You get the picture.

The situation reminds me of the story from Stalin’s Russia, where standing ovations for his speeches would go on for 20 minutes or more as nobody wanted to be the first to stop clapping. Having started down the road of “black representation” none of the white middle class guilt junkies that run the media and culture sectors want to be seen to be the first to return to something like a representation of the nation’s actual demographics or have an historically accurate cast in a period piece. Commissioning a programme set in a small village in 17^th century Norfolk and NOT having half a dozen black people in it? Oh, the racist horror!

Add to this the constant drum beat of anti-white, anti-English, opinions, that goes with all this “repres-en-tashON!” (as Nerdrotic terms it) and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to pay to see a play I love, about the history of the country that I love, being used as another weapon in the Marxist kulturkampf against that country. Nevertheless, I thought it over, read a couple of reviews, and decided it would be only fair to give Andoh’s production a chance. Even if it was pure propagandistic trash, at least I could enjoy myself afterwards by writing a scathing review.

Then the coronation happened.

As you’d expect there were plenty of programmes with various folk in studios, of differing levels of ignorance, mostly talking utter horse elbows about the day’s proceedings. One such programme had Andoh as one of the talking heads, and she did rather cause a stir. When the royal family came out onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace. Andoh commented that after the inclusiveness of the coronation itself the royal family looked “terribly white”.

Now, just imagine the reaction if a reviewer dared to say that the cast of Hamilton was “terribly black”.

Quite. And we’re not even talking about the cast of a show. Saying that a family is terribly white, (as if being white is itself a bad thing) and insinuating its members should be chosen according to a colour chart, it’s as nasty as it is bizarre. Of course, the one homoeopathically black semi-detached member of the family was not there. Not because she is of a marginally different colour, but because she is a vicious toxic tart who has spent most of the time since she married into the Royal Family trying to damage it as much as she can.

One bright spot is that people have not taken this lying down and Andoh has caught a fair bit of flack over this. One BBC presenter told her in an interview meant to calm the waters that no-one had really been upset by her comment. The reaction to that has left both of them under no illusions as to the inaccuracy of what he said and almost grown bigger than the reaction to her original comment.

After that, good, bad, or indifferent, there was no way I was going to pay money to see Andoh’s take on Richard III.

Her toxic little barb was just one small part of a much bigger campaign to attack the Royal Family on the racism front. There is, of course, the ongoing, indeed, interminable situation with the Sussex’s, where allegations of racism make up a big part of the weaponry being used.

Seemingly unconnected was the nasty little ambush at Buckingham Palace last November when charity executive, Ngozi Fulani, made a media mountain out of the socially awkward molehill of comments by Lady in Waiting, Lady Susan Hussey. I say seemingly unconnected, because I did discover that not only has Fulani made public statements supporting Meghan Markle in the past, but there is a connection between them. Photographer Misan Harriman, who has taken various sets of family pictures for the Sussex’s and who has a close relationship with the couple, also did a set of portraits for Fulani’s charity Sistah Space, including of Fulani herself. So, she at least knows him on a professional level. This doesn’t prove there was any collusion between Fulani and Meghan, but it does establish a potential link by which collusion could be arranged.

The coronation has also been a catalyst for renewed claims for “returning” of objects such as the Koh-i-Noor and Cullinane diamonds to people who never owned them. These claims come with gusts of hot air made up of the words “slavery” “colonialism” and “racism” in various combinations.

Superficially the British Royal Family seems vulnerable to these attacks, and certainly their reaction has been much that of auto cringe and to ask “how high?” when their attackers shout jump. Their ancestors did, after all, preside over a massive empire that ruled millions of people of all sorts of colours and creeds around the world. The family themselves are, of course, white, but then, families of mixed Anglo-Scots, German, Scandinavian, and Russian ancestry tend to be.

That said, the RF’s actual track record on race is nothing for them to be ashamed of, certainly over the last two centuries. While the monarchs of the 17^th and 18^th centuries presided over a nation that played a huge role in trans-Atlantic slave trade, and some monarchs even invested in it themselves, they were far from unique in this. From the 19^th century onwards the story changes. In 1807, under Charles III’s five times great grandfather, George III, Britain became the first major power to permentently ban the slave trade. His four times great Uncle, William IV, gave Royal Assent to the Act which started the process of getting rid of the institution of slavery itself in British territory. Under the King’s three times great grandmother, Victoria, many of the Imperial campaigns and additions to the Empire were prompted by the fight to stamp out slavery. From Victoria onwards British monarchs were also highly sensitive to the multi-racial make up of their Empire and tried hard to be, in modern terms, “inclusive”. Troops from all over the Empire were brought, at great expense, to London for the coronations in 1902, 1911, and 1937. In 1902 there were over 1,400 men in the Indian Army contingent alone.

During the 1911 coronation visit, two Indian soldiers had their coronation medals stolen by two white English soldiers of the Middlesex Regiment. When he heard about the incident The current king’s great grandfather, George V, was furious and ordered that the two men face the fullest of penalties. They were among the the last soldiers to being formally “drummed out”, being stripped of their insignia in ceremony of degradation front of the their whole regiment before facing the more usual penalties of the law. 

On his state visit to South Africa in 1947, the year before Apartheid was introduced, Charles III’s grandfather, George VI, was appalled when he was told by his hosts to only shake hands with whites. It is said he ignored this.

The late and much-lamented Elizabeth II spent a large amount of time on the Commonwealth, trying to bring together people of all races in harmony. At home, she frequently visited the most ethnically diverse areas and probably went into more Mosques, Sikh Gurdwaras and Hindu Temples than any other white person in the country. She also supported various community specific projects, such as the Ebony Riding Club in the well-known Afro-Caribbean area of Brixton. Her son has followed her example and went to great lengths to make sure his subjects of all colours and faiths were part of his coronation.

It might seem counter intuitive, but the British Royal Family has long been one of the more socially liberal institutions in the UK, and not just on race. There is the wonderful story about Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. One evening at Clarence House she had rung down for her evening Gin and Tonic. It was a long time coming and so she toddled down to the kitchens and found two servants, both gay as many of the Household staff are, having a full on argument. The Queen Mum cut in sharply. “When you two old queens have quite finished, this old Queen wants her G&T!”

Given all of this, and Andoh’s comment and the fact that Ngozi Fulani (who was originally Marlene Headley) runs a charity which caters exclusively to black women, (they’ve even turned away women for not being black enough) was invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace, I think it is clear there is blatant racism in 21st century Britain, but it’s not coming from the Royal Family.