Were we supposed to be laughing at this?
Warwick Davis is an actor with dwarfism. That hasn't stopped him having a successful career in film and TV although his roles have been limited by his short stature. He can play Ewoks and elves but might struggle to be cast as Macbeth or Romeo, and that has always frustrated him.
To try and combat this, he set up The Reduced Height Theatre Company which would stage serious plays with an entirely dwarf cast, played on a miniaturised set.
Davis's aim was to have short actors taken seriously in the great plays, so did they stage Hamlet or A Streetcar Named Desire? No, they opted for See How They Run, 'a farce featuring several vicars.' Instantly this seemed odd. We watched the actors pose for publicity photos dressed as tiny vicars and it looked comical. I thought the aim was for them to be taken seriously? So why set them up for mockery?
And was it OK to laugh at this? Political correctness kept saying no, but the actors themselves were surely saying yes. Even the producer told his assembled short cast, 'These are larger parts than you're used to playing.'
The programme started in mock-serious mode. Warwick Davis was in the back seat of a taxi which glided through the dark, neon-lit streets of London's West End. The lamplight flickered over his face and the voiceover spoke of the plight of short actors who'll never be taken seriously in the famous dramatic roles. In this fake film noir I almost expected Davis to light a cigarette then frown through the smoke at a dangerous broad who'd just sashayed past, a mink stole tossed over her shoulder. Davis seemed to be telling us that a short actor can only do 'noir' if it's done in a sarcastic way.
And when we met the short actors they told us how they'd only ever had roles playing elves and that there's always work to be found whenever Snow White is in panto. So again, a serious issue was pulled down into the absurd.
I wanted to laugh, not out of malice, but at the strange predicament these short actors find themselves in: many actors struggle to find work, yet those with dwarfism are forever in demand as long as they don't mind being elves or other magical creatures. Yet by doing so they ruin their chances of being taken seriously, but if they don't accept these roles how can they ever break into the acting world? It is a maddening, and bleakly comic, scenario.
Yes, I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, but political correctness kept pulling me back, but all the signs were there that this was a comic, tongue-in-cheek enterprise: we want short actors to be taken seriously so we'll dress them up as vicars and have them dash about in a manic performance and wouldn't it be great, says Warwick, if we could get Mini to sponsor the run…
This was comedy, right? Just as I began to relax and accept that this documentary was meant to provoke humour, it got serious. Davis's wife, also born with dwarfism, was in need of major spinal surgery. The camera shoved its way into her hospital room and actually filmed her having a drip inserted and a mask secured on her face.
Why were we watching this frightened woman being anaesthetised? Why be so horribly intrusive unless it's to counter the humour of the earlier segments, as if to say 'we may joke about 'short actors' but this is the other aspect of dwarfism: constant hospital visits and curvature of the spine and the prospect of life in a wheelchair.' Couldn't there have been a more subtle way of correcting the balance?
A lot of time was spent in the hospital and in seeing Davis's children, who also have dwarfism, and I felt this was simply exploitative. It seemed Davis was so keen to blast his new business (and it is a business. He spoke of how he might lose his house if it flopped) all over the media but felt he needed something bleak to balance the comical side of it.
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