The world is a complicated place, and while society often develops in a good direction, it can also be difficult, hateful and contradictory.
Over the last couple of months, four stories have demonstrated to this columnist that we should never take anything for granted. Perhaps the most worrying has already been covered in a previous column.
Having landed the role of a lifetime portraying Juliet opposite Spider-Man a.k.a. Tom Holland, you would have thought that Francesca Amewudah-Rivers would be in seventh heaven with her career assured and innumerable offers of future work. That may still be the case. However, before she gets there, the unfortunate actress has had to put up with streams of cyber bullying, apparently for the sole reason that her skin is not an acceptable colour to the types of folk who have recently been going to prison for their contributions to the summer race riots.
Few of us will have an issue with those that provide valid criticisms of performances on stage (of which more later). When the objection is purely to the physical attributes of an actor, surely that should be unacceptable in what purports to be a civilised society. Apparently not, since in a recent interview with The Stage, she revealed that, “the flurry of abuse was sustained throughout the whole job. I received death threats, hate mail sent to the theatre. I didn’t feel safe at work.”
Even though the court system is creaking with gaols full to busting, one hopes that the authorities are taking the necessary action, tracking down those guilty of hate crimes and using the full force of the law against them.
The other three issues all relate to what might come under the heading of “cancel culture”, although many readers may not be entirely certain what this amorphous phrase means, given its excessive politicisation.
In last week’s BTG newsletter, our editor David Chadderton expressed his concern about the mystery surrounding the cancellation by Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre of as harmless a play as one can ever hope to find, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Clearly a story like this could not hide its light under a bushel for long and, according to media reports, the reasons for the last-minute cancellation were song lyrics referring to trans rights and using the term “Free Palestine”, the latter phrase also reputedly due to appear on the set. Equity has already stated that it was “deeply frustrated at what appears to be in a high-handed decision.”
In the BBC web site’s coverage of this story, there was mention of the fact that the Royal Exchange is funded to the tune of £2.4 million a year by Arts Council England. One wonders whether it is attempting to hint that the cancellation and funding body are somehow connected?
Ironically, this wasn’t the first story of a cancellation resulting from the Gaza conflict. At the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, comedian Reginald D Hunter found himself in the middle of a farrago following allegedly threatening behaviour by some audience members towards one or two of their fellows who happened to be Israeli.
Stand-up comedians can be challenging and this is not the first time that Reginald D Hunter has flirted with material alleged to be anti-Semitic. In that his methodology centres on being anti-everything, this is almost par for the course. The difference this time is that his show was summarily cancelled. In this case, the coverage has been too vague to obtain a full understanding of the rights and wrongs.
Also in Edinburgh this year, although it is not the first time, a theatre company attempted to persuade BTG to remove a review it regarded as unfavourable. This is an attempt at censorship pure and simple and makes one wonder whether certain PR teams should make it clear when inviting members of the press to see shows that they only require wholly positive reviews with 5 stars appended? If so, why bother?