Diversity and Casting in The Wife of Willesden (McGoldrick)
By Molly McGoldrick.
Early in our time in London, our class went to see The Wife of Willesden– a play written by Zadie Smith, an English writer known for her treatment of race, religion, and cultural identity. The play is based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales– specifically The Wife of Bath’s Tale. After reading the work in high school, it was nice rereading it and then seeing a newer sort of adaptation of it which takes place in Willesden, the area of Northwest London that Smith is from, and follows Alvita, a Jamaican-born British woman married five times.
Usually, I prefer to go into a show “blind” with little to no prior knowledge, but with this show, knowing the tale it was based on well prior to seeing the show was nothing but helpful. Overall, the show was very good, but, with it being one of the first shows I saw here, the racial variety of actors on stage took me aback. It is something I have unfortunately really only seen once before. I think London is unlike Broadway and other theatres in other cities because it is the first to really understand and practice “color-blind casting”, or in this show’s case, color-swapped casting. (Color-blind casting is casting roles without consideration of the race of the actor; color-swapped casting is color-conscious casting that changes the race of characters.) Zadie Smith taking the older writings of Geoffrey Chaucer and writing this play and writing her culture into it was beautiful, and I hope that the show is brought to Broadway because I think it could use a show like it.
Because not only was it important to Smith and other’s culture and to people of color as a whole, but the diversity of the casting was astonishing and something to really be proud of. The only show on Broadway I have ever seen this in was SIX: The Musical, which actually originated in London. And even in that show, unfortunately, the new cast that started in December has ethnic and racial similarities to the original cast that are hard for me to overlook. Like any city, there is plenty of diversity in London, but I think London does a good job of embracing and celebrating all cultures. Of course, there are still plenty of improvements that can be made, but I think that they are further along than many other cities.
