Have done a transcript!
Sarah Montague: It is fifty years since 'Jesus Christ Superstar' was a massive hit. Its latest incarnation this week by, Edinburgh University's Savoy Opera Group, the world's first gender-neutral production. Jesus is played by a non-binary actor who uses the pronouns they/them, Judas will be a woman, and the other disciples will be either female or non-binary. Although Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber gave permission for the use of their production, they have insisted that the lyrics remain the same, so, those pronouns won't change. What does it add to the production?
[Then plays a couple of clips from past plays where women took male roles]
So, Tony award winner and Oscar nominated actor Tom Conti joins us now, good afternoon.
Tom Conti: Hello Sarah. <chuckle> Well compared to the hell of the Ukraine, and children being cruelly abused and the poor women in Afghanistan, this all seems a bit pathetic, doesn't it?
SM: Well, we like to have a mix of things on the program ...
TC: <laughs in background> I know
SM: ... and this is something in a way it reflects our culture doesn't it, that this ...
TC: <sounding more serious in tone> very much so
SM: ... production opening this week. What do you think of it? That there is .. and I think we were particularly intrigued, don't expect to say the phrase 'Jesus in non-binary'.
TC:<laughs> Well of course the first question about all of this is - why? I think it probably started with the director trying to make a name for himself or herself - saying oh, let's have a go playing Julius Caesar or whatever it is. My view is as producers or directors, it's not our function to give jobs to any particular sections of society. It's simply to make the production as good as we can, and you, you distort a play if you put a, if you have a man playing a women's role or vice versa. And men and women <laughs> men and women are different, you've probably noticed.
Em, and I remember years ago, I was doing a play in New York called 'Whose Life is it Anyway', and Mary Tyler-Moore expressed an interest in doing it. Mary Tyler-Moore, for those who don't know, was a huge television star in America, and she wanted to play this part and that meant it had to be changed for a woman. And so, someone went through and changed all the hes to shes and all the rest of it, and we sat down and looked at the script, the director and the producer and myself, and thought 'this is ridiculous', because, if a woman is in this situation, of being paralysed, she would react to it in a very different way from a man, so you have to write it completely differently. So when you change a role from male to female or the other way round, you have to actually rewrite the whole thing to make it - sensible. Because women approach things in a different way from men.
SM: <tentatively> But isn't this, erm, when you play around with the casting of genders, making all of us think, challenging the way we think, about genders; which is exactly what, erm a lot of, you know, which, in a way the world is <half-word, going?> , a change the world is undergoing at the moment. Isn't that a good thing?
TC: No. This is, this is not a good change, I don't think. I mean gender is gender. Men are men and women are women and there are people who feel that they ought, ought to be a different gender and I understand that and I have huge sympathy for them it's a ghastly situation to be in. But you don't change the whole world because of that, they have to learn to deal with it, in the same way people learn to deal with illness or alcoholism or, or all sorts of things. Erm ...
SM: But in a way the challenge is surely - oh <laughs>, we're up against it time-wise, <garbled> as ever a subject that can go on, Tom Conti we have to leave it there, I'm being flagged through the glass here, thank you very much, because - I'm Sarah Montegue and that's The World at One Forty-Five.