Our ducks are back. Two wild mallard have spent the last five springs on the brook which gurgles past us in Herefordshire. Each year they produce a paddling of chicks; each year most of the ducklings are killed by predators. Our friend Becky thinks she spotted an otter, more likely stoat or mink, in the brook. The fluffy ducklings have little chance of survival. We wish the mother duck would nest somewhere safer but there is no telling her or her green-headed drake.
If I have felt kinship with the ducks lately it was because I was being pursued by sharp-fanged ferrets from the anti-meritocratic, politically unrepresentative, over-indulged arts establishment. In a Daily Mail theatre review I questioned diversity targets and colour-blind/gender-blind casting. I criticised the performance of Leo Wringer, a black actor who plays a gallumphing squire in a period-costume Restoration comedy produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Mr Wringer is a distinguished thesp but a duff choice for this role. He is too laid-back, too chic, insufficiently quirky to convey the physical comedy of a huntin’, shootin’, lurcher-obsessed, barking-mad Squire Haggard. Nowhere did I say no black actor should ever be cast in Restoration comedy. That is not what I believe. But that is what my enemies allege. The part played by Mr Wringer could be done well by Simon Trinder, one of my favourite comedy actors, who happens to be black. But it struck me the RSC specifically sought a black actor for this role in order to match the colour of the guy playing his character’s brother. I suspect they were trying to make a political point — to prod their white Warwickshire audience and to satisfy Arts Council diversity box-tickers. I asked if the RSC saw itself primarily as a political organisation or as an arts/entertainment outfit.
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