Sarah on theater

Setting aside the controversy for a couple paragraphs, but I’ll get there. Kind of an interesting recast since it seems to have mostly been motivated by Andrew Barth Feldman dating his now-co-star, Helen J. Shen, even over whether he’s exactly the right fit for the part. (Admittedly, they are very cute—I loved seeing them perform together in the one-off “Hello Dolly” and was excited for this when it was announced.)

I’m a fan of both Andrew and the show, and I think he’s just fine in this. The best moments hold up okay, but this isn’t an obligatory rewatch unless you find the real-life context especially endearing. The most interesting difference is that his vocal range is noticeably higher than Darren Criss, and the Oliver character sings a lot of harmonies with Claire (and occasionally James), which requires some tweaks to the music. All of Oliver’s solo songs have their key raised a bit and some of the duets do as well, with other actors pitching up to compensate. In a couple of songs (noticed this most in “Hitting the Road”) they seem to have skipped the key change and just accepted that he’s going to be a little less powerful, and I wouldn’t say that was Darren’s great strength to begin with.

Without taking a position on the specifics of it—you might think I have an implied one from having bought a ticket, but—I think a lot of the discourse about this casting is not super coherent. If you aren’t familiar, the casting of Andrew Barth Feldman, who is white, was controversial because he replaced Darren Criss, who is of partial Filipino descent, in a show set in Seoul with Korean creators. This led to pretty widespread debate about Asian representation in principal roles, which is a long-running conversation in the medium (see “Miss Saigon” in 1989), modulo “Is Darren Criss white-passing?” and “Are the Philippines and Korea that close together?” and “Do robots have ethnicity at all?”

There’s basically no exact right answer for some of this stuff, and you can decide for yourself how you feel about it (and how strongly). I guess I would generally say it would be good if we could all allow ourselves to hold multiple truths at the same time. It’s definitely true that non-white actors have historically been overlooked on Broadway. It’s definitely true that a show set in Seoul would be a good opportunity to cast one of those actors. It’s definitely true that representation is important to change the status quo in the future (and I know I pay closer attention to when my own demographics are represented than others, so I’m trying to do more listening than talking in this case). It’s definitely true that the creative team didn’t think of Oliver as having racial or ethnic requirements, and it’s definitely true that art often takes on meanings beyond the creators’ intent. It’s definitely true that some people weren’t thinking of Darren Criss as an example of non-white casting, and it’s definitely true that some were.

It’s probably true that they could have done better in picking a replacement Oliver. It’s definitely healthy to point that out. It’s probably true that this isn’t the most egregious mistake—they were clearly trying to do something cute and had a bad read on how the fanbase would receive it. It’s definitely not cool to bombard the cast on social media about this. It’s probably a good opportunity to do better next time. It’s definitely, definitely, definitely true that we all need to treat each other with a little more grace and not make perfect the enemy of good. That’s a lot of equivocating—but ultimately it’s not my fight and I’m trying to empathize and engage in earnest.