“DEI comes for Romeo and Juliet”
As EA columnist Curmie likes to say, and I’m sure he will, “Oh bloody hell.”
Citizen Free Press has taken over the conservative news aggregator title from the once ubiquitous Drudge Report, after the latter went pseudo-woke and virulently Trump-Deranged. CFP is conservative and Trump-lovin’ all righ; it’s headline links are also frequently juvenile (“Nancy Pelosi should have kept her pie-hole shut!”). Now we know that nobody connected with the website 1) knows more about theater, drama and Shakespeare than the average Frisbee and 2) doesn’t know what DEI means despite constantly complaining about it.
The linked story tells us that a West End production of “Romeo and Juliet” in London will feature a white actor as Romeo and a black actress as Juliet.
Non-traditional casting has been flourishing in the theater at all levels since at least the 1970s, and creative casting and conceptions of “Romeo and Juliet” are among the most common and varied of theatrical practices. Casting a mixed race couple in that classic tragedy is almost as routine now as casting two white lovers. (I saw a production with that mix just last year). There have been professional versions with two men as R&J, two women, two “non-binaries.” There have been production in which the doomed lovers are played by septuagenarians. The Montegues and Capulets have been transported to China, the African Plains, the hillbilly Appalachians a la Hatfield and McCoys, and galaxies far, far away.
Some of these wild re-workings of the ancient script have been good and even great. Do the right-wing dufusses who run the site not know about the obscure musical called “West Side Story,” in which “Romeo,” aka “Tony” is white, and “Juliet,” or “Maria,” is Puerto Rican? That “DEI” version premiered in 1957.
To sum up: there is nothing “DEI” or even novel about mixed-race casting of “Romeo and Juliet,” or any Shakespeare play, for that matter.
Jeez, conservatives…you really have to get out more. Try to keep up. That was pathetic.
Ethics Alarms 
Let’s just say you predicted my response with considerable accuracy.
Whew!
The worst casting I have ever witnessed was RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN as Tony in West Side story at the Mineola Theater, c. 1970’s. The Jets and the Sharks were as over the top gay as “La cage aux folles.” From my audience vantage point there were no POC, only blond haired, blue eyed nordics.