Someone has belatedly noticed that the Bristol Old Vic production of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine – which transferred to the Barbican Theatre and played its final performance last Saturday – had some cuts imposed on it. According to a headline in The Times today, “Marlowe’s Koran-burning hero is censored to avoid Muslim anger.”
Of course, it will be remembered that Salman Rushdie’s books were publicly burnt when they provoked Muslim anger, but a stage direction that called for the same to happen to the Koran would, according to Simon Reade (the BoV’s artistic director) “have unnecessarily raised the hackles of a significant proportion of one of the world’s great religions” and therefore have been “unnecessarily inflammatory” (so to speak). Lines referring to Mohamet, too, were excised; and according to a story in the Daily Mail today, Reade commented, “We did want to get distracted with an issue that was totally not relevant. It’s not to do with contemporary religion or terrorism.”
But Terry Hands, who directed London’s last Tamburlaine for the RSC in 1992, has responded, “I don’t believe you should interfere with any classic for reasons of religious or political correctness.”
So Marlowe may have been censored; and in other news, so is Mary Poppins. After being asked to re-review the show and its new set of principal performers next Tuesday, critics have now had that invitation suddenly withdrawn. Given the onward rush of Christmas shows that will be opening in the coming weeks and thus entirely filling our diaries, I suspect it is unlikely that we’ll be asked back now till the New Year.
