| I'm surprised and disappointed that Chip isn't Asian in this version (spoilers) | |
| Last Edit: mikem 12:39 pm EDT 10/20/24 | |
| Posted by: mikem 12:38 pm EDT 10/20/24 | |
| In reply to: Last day for brief, wonderful "Spelling Bee" in DC - wizrdofoz27 07:18 am EDT 10/20/24 | |
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| (spoilers) With this cast, I am assuming that the possibility of a Broadway run is at least in the back of people's minds. I'm surprised that Chip Tolentino, the character played by Jose Llana in the original Broadway cast, isn't Asian in this version. (He is played by Philippe Arroyo, who doesn't seem to be Asian from what I can find on the Internet.) It's fairly unusual for a character to be played by a person of color of a certain race in the original Broadway cast and then be played by someone of a different ethnicity in a future major production. (Hamilton is a notable exception to this.) This is especially surprising because there is a line in the original script that refers to the character being Asian -- when the character comes out as Jesus, Marcy says something like, "I knew Jesus was Asian!," which got a lot of laughs. So a laugh line gets taken out if the character is not Asian. And I remember that Jose Llana asked for the character's last name to be changed to something that reflected the fact that the character is Asian. (In the prior workshops, I believe the character was played by someone who was white.) I especially find it disheartening because at the time that Spelling Bee had its original run, it was very rare for there to be more than one Asian actor in a small cast when the script was not centered around the Asian community. (I guess I shouldn't say, "at that time," because it's still true today. I saw a TV show recently where one of the regular cast, who was Asian, has a random conversation with a stranger, who was also of Asian descent. In a variant of the Bechdel test, there were two Asian people talking, and they were not related, nor did their conversation have anything to do with being Asian. It really struck me, because that really almost never happens on TV, in the movies, or on stage.) As an Asian person myself who was fairly young at that time, it meant something to see two Asian characters in this show. And Marcy Park is SUCH an Asian stereotype that it was nice to have another Asian character who was not so stereotypical. (I realize that other characters are also extremely stereotypical besides Marcy.) Aaron Albano, who is of Filipino descent, replaced Jose Llana, but the national tour began, I believe, with Miguel Cervantes, who is not Asian as far as I can tell from the internet. At the time, it seemed odd that the national tour would not have an Asian actor in that role, and to me, it smacked a little of the "But the Asian talent pool isn't big enough that we could cast this role as Asian" viewpoint of Cameron Mackintosh during Miss Saigon. And I feel like that's kind of happening here, too. Not to knock on Philippe Arroyo, but he is not a box office draw despite his talent. There are plenty of examples where a character was played by a white actor in the original Broadway cast and was played by a person of color in a future major cast, but are there other examples besides Hamilton where a character was played by a person of color in the original Broadway cast and was played by a person of a different race in the national tour or other major productions? |
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| Previous: | re: Last day for brief, wonderful "Spelling Bee" in DC - Fasslercom 03:24 pm EDT 10/20/24 |
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