Romeo and Richard III are enlisted in the casting wars

There is a commercial logic, too. A megastar among young audiences, Mr Holland may be the most famous of the Hollywood A-listers to appear recently in the West End and on Broadway. After performances at the Duke of York’s theatre, he is mobbed at the stage door. Almost all the few remaining tickets, in a run that lasts until August, cost £345 ($440). Critics of celebrity casting worry that it contributes to rising prices. Not every screen idol, they point out, has the chops for a soliloquy.

Mr Holland enters in a hoodie and the sort of nasty short-fringe haircut that some teenagers now go in for. With wit and warmth, plus a flash of bicep, he proves the doubters wrong. Nuanced and lucid, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, a relative unknown, is even better than Juliet. (A black actor, she has been vilely abused by racists purporting to know what Juliet really looked like.) There is no balcony in this pared-back production. The star-crossed couple sit touchingly side by side to declare their love.

Jamie Lloyd, the director, has brought in lots of young punters. Alas, his stylised staging lets them and the actors down. He uses cameras and screens to relay action from the foyer and roof; passion is intercut with bloodshed. Much less successful is the choice to have many lines declaimed into standing microphones, as if in a slam poetry contest. Weakening the links between characters, this trick frays their bond with the audience.

Across the Thames at Shakespeare’s Globe, a new “Richard III” has set off another kind of ruckus. Michelle Terry, the theatre’s artistic director, is the titular villain in an almost entirely female cast. She has received abuse for presuming, as a woman, to play a king. But gender is not the main flashpoint.

Rather it is the flouting of a new orthodoxy. This holds that, for reasons of authenticity and justice, disabled parts must be played by disabled actors (and trans parts by trans actors—and so on with other marginalised groups). Richard III is described and typically portrayed as disabled. Thus, the Disabled Artists Alliance protested, “This role belongs to us.”

Like many battles in the culture wars, this is not a skirmish between lefties and reactionaries, but between progressives with diverging tactics. Committed to “anti-literalism” in casting, the Globe is a champion of inclusivity. Recently Francesca Mills, who has a form of dwarfism, was a sensational Duchess of Malfi. Nadia Nadarajah, who is deaf, will soon star in “Antony & Cleopatra”.

If the Globe is the wrong theatre to berate, this is also the wrong show. Largely described in insults, Richard’s physical affliction is sketchy in Shakespeare’s text. Here almost all these references are excised; the focus is on the play’s deep seam of misogyny. An able-bodied Richard glories in forcing the widow of a man he killed to marry him—then murders her. He hates women and, perceptively, they hate him back. The cross-gender casting makes you think anew about the play’s macho violence.

Yet this show, too, has a tragic flaw. It wants you to see the parallels between Richard and bullies today, especially Donald Trump. Unfortunately, it whacks you over the head with this analogy like a Plantagenet knight with a mace. It is anyway a flimsy comparison. True, both men are dangerous bosses to serve; both disparage norms and women. But the king is less a demagogue than a machinator. He is funnier than Mr Trump—and has a glimmer of conscience.

Shakespeare, and the stage, belong to everyone. By and large directors should cast whomever they think best for a role. Wanting to make a point or turn a profit is perfectly fine. All the same, these productions fall down for the same reason their critics are mistaken. A casting choice is the beginning, not the end, of telling a story. Making art involves much more than causing a stir.

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