Ice Cube will be playing Fagin

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ChadS said:
With the success of Hamilton this will be the new rage.

ChadS
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Or not.

Playbill:
Music Theatre Bristol, a student theatre company operating in the U.K., has canceled its planned production of Disney’s Tony Award-winning musical Aida due to outry over cultural appropriation and concern that the show’s casting conceits would whitewash the production. Planned as MTB’s spring 2017 production, *Aida *was selected as part of the season by the student members of MTB, however, several students and community members raised concerns that the play set in ancient Egypt—and the casting of white performers in Nubian and Egyptian roles—was cultural appropriation.
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No one will ever remotely approach Alec Guinness’ version in David Lean’s 1948 film version. Having read the novel a number of times, I can safely say that Alec’s portrayal was dead on the mark, and fully captured the “racism” of what was originally intended. There was very clearly a lot of tongue in cheek exaggeration on Guinness’ part, but that is what Dickens intended. Dim wit that I am, I can still hold my own with any Dickensian revisionist. 🤷 So that’s basically how I view Ice Cube playing this role: a very safe alternative to the character as he was written. A causcasian playing that role honestly could kiss his career goodbye, but Ice Cube’s lovable enough and he’s got enough juice in Hollywood that he can pull it off without any problems.

And I don’t mean to slag Ice Cube, because from his perspective it’s a good gig, and he’s probably starving for legit roles and real theater stuff. But it’s blatantly an attempt to make Dickens accessible to modern people who are unfamiliar with the written work.
 
didymus said:
Or not.

Playbill:
…however, several students and community members raised concerns that the play set in ancient Egypt—and the casting of white performers in Nubian and Egyptian roles—was cultural appropriation.
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Considering the musical was written by two white guys (Elton John and Tim Rice) based on an opera by another white guy (Verdi), the whole thing smacks of cultural appropriation and should not be performed by any one of any colour. What are white Europeans doing writing stuff about ancient Egypt? 🤷

Given that it is indeed going ahead anyway, my protest to the contrary…who exactly should play an ancient Egyptian that would not be cultural appropriation? :hmmm:
 
John_Lazarus said:
Considering the musical was written by two white guys (Elton John and Tim Rice) based on an opera by another white guy (Verdi), the whole thing smacks of cultural appropriation and should not be performed by any one of any colour. What are white Europeans doing writing stuff about ancient Egypt? 🤷

Given that it is indeed going ahead anyway, my protest to the contrary…who exactly should play an ancient Egyptian that would not be cultural appropriation? :hmmm:
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administrative control thereof

SMOD 2016!
 
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