We are always seeing celebrity cast announcements for theatre shows: this year alone Self Esteem (Rebecca Lucy Taylor) has starred in the West End revival of Cabaret, Ruth Jones is taking the role of Mother Superior in Sister Act and Jason Manford is reprising the role of the cowardly lion in Manchester during the Wizard of Oz tour. But should celebrities really be taking these parts given that the theatre industry is currently struggling and more than 50% of actors are living below the poverty line?
Theatre shows commonly justify hiring celebrities in lead roles because they can draw in bigger and more diverse audiences which can help to keep a show, or even a theatre, running. This ensures that there continue to be jobs for other people in the industry because most shows need a large ensemble cast and there are lots of backstage jobs in the theatre industry whose stability rely on audience numbers. Celebrity stars also allow theatres to charge more for tickets because people are often willing to pay more to see their favourite celebrity in a show that they don’t know too well than they would to see the same show without any celebrity stars. However, the big problem with this is that the celebrity star usually doesn’t perform every night so you could turn up thinking that you’re going to see Ruth Jones, for example, to then find out that it is actually her understudy performing that night. Despite the fact that understudies are highly trained theatre professionals and perform to a very high standard, many people will be disappointed if they don’t get to see the celebrity that they booked to see which can lead to the theatre receiving complaints and even being forced to issue refunds. With this, it is also important to remember that celebrity stars aren’t trained theatre professionals, and they often don’t have the stamina to perform eight or more shows a week so the understudies are likely to be performing more than they would be in shows without celebrity stars.
One of the main reasons why celebrity casting receives backlash is that actors and musical theatre performers typically spend many years training for their stage career whereas celebrity stars often have little to no experience or training on the stage. For example, although Ruth Jones has a drama degree and played Nessa in Gavin and Stacey, she has said that she was actually put off doing theatre by her fear of forgetting her lines; she is making her West End debut as Mother Superior. Whilst most West End actors would have to spend years performing in ensembles and gradually progressing to larger roles, Ruth Jones has been able to totally skip over this thanks to her success on TV. This seems pretty unfair, especially when you consider that an actor who had made it big on the West End would be very unlikely to automatically land a starring role on TV. Nevertheless, in the grand scheme of things, Ruth Jones, Self Esteem and Jason Manford aren’t actually overly bad choices, since they all have experience performing. On the other hand, there was lots of criticism when English cricketer Freddie Flintoff was cast in Fat Friends the Musical in 2018 since even he stated that he’d never been in anything like it before, so it was very much felt like he was taking roles from trained actors. In the end, he received very good reviews so perhaps the most important thing to take into account when considering a celebrity casting is their acting and singing ability rather than the reason why they’re famous.
Overall, celebrity casting is definitely here to stay as it is doing a lot to financially sustain the theatre industry, but it is very important to make sure that celebrities are up to the demands of their role in order to avoid disappointing audiences. Therefore, if you personally think that celebrity casting needs to go, the best thing you can do is to avoid going to shows starring celebrities and focus on shows that cast well-trained stage actors instead.
