cross-gendering roles

Would be fun to see:

Ms Lynch in Grease
Ms Hannigan in Annie
Mame

Miss Sunshine in Chicago

Mary Sunshine doesnt count - it's written to be a man in drag playing a woman.

Like "Virgina Woolf" what if George and Martha were cross-gendered? It would give an interesting dynamic to the show. Or have a man play Eliza in "My Fair Lady" but play it as a woman would.

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I realized!

But notice how most of the cross-gendering incidents are men playing women, is it tougher for a woman to play a male part?

I'm not talking about like what they do in British panto or Shakespeare, what about a female in male drag as Willy Loman?

I still think a man as Blanche DuBois with everyone else in correct gender would be fascinating.

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"But notice how most of the cross-gendering incidents are men playing women, is it tougher for a woman to play a male part?"

Two other roles I can think of are, perhaps oddly, in movies with Mary Pickford playing the part of Little Lord Fauntleroy and Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously.

Duse,Bernhardt and Nielsen obviously played male roles and other actresses such as Charlotte Charke, famously played Macheath in The Beggar's Opera and Charlotte Cushman, played Romeo. Fiona Shaw was an outstanding Richard II - there is an excellent BBC version of the play which should be seen.

I wonder if in American theatre the shadow of Stanislavsky's school of "realism" - which is not prevalent in the UK - has had the effect of stifling that leap of imagination.

Yes, mef, but once he dies...

In the early 90s Pat Carroll portrayed Falstaff in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" in Washington, DC.

I'm a man and I would love to play Miss. Hannigan.

"Dolly Levi was played by a man in a well-received production of HD on the West End."

The actor was the well-known drag artiste Danny La Rue - it frankly wasn't much of a surprise for his, mostly, blue-rinse audience, given that he wears a frock most of the time - nonetheless it was fun.

Peter Pan is often played by a male actor in the UK, in the original play.

Daniel Evans at the National as Peter Pan

"well that's strange since jm barrie wanted it played by a female."

Barrie never ruled out the possibility that Peter could be played by a boy. Whilst Peter Pan is not a traditional pantomime, the principal boy (actress) was very much the norm and Maude Adams was Barrie's first choice as he finalised writing the play, and he found Nina Bouccicault and Pauline Chase excellent, however he was not against casting a male, he considered one young man for the 1920/21 Peter Pan production and earlier in 1910 Herbert Hollom became the first male Peter Pan, in the equivalent of an understudies' matinee. But I suppose he thought that a young boy would not have enough experience to play the part and a post-pubescent actor would not sound or look right.

One of the effects of having a female play Peter Pan was that the Lost Boys all had to be played by actresses of roughly the same age - all bar Slightly Soiled who was played by an actor however he could not be seen sharing a bed with the other "boys" in th Underground scene. The Darling Boys, however, were played by actors......

In an early draft of the play Mrs Darling doubled as Capt Hook (or The Pirate King), rather than Mr Darling - which is intriguing.....

Updated On: 12/17/05 at 08:08 PM

Hedwig from HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH can and has been played by either a male or female actor.

I would kill to see Sir Ian McKellen as Widow Twankey in the ALADDIN pantomime in London's West End.

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Pirelli in the new Sweeney Todd revival is played by a woman, though it was originally a male role. The whole "concept"(mental institution) makes this okay, but I'd still consider it cross-gendering to some extent.