Last summer, it was announced that legendary British actor Sir Ian McKellen is about to start rehearsals for a new production of Hamlet to be performed post-lockdown in the Theatre Royal Windsor near London. He won’t be playing Claudius or Polonius though; at age 81 he will take on the Prince of Denmark himself, a role traditionally played by actors in their twenties and thirties (McKellen himself last played Hamlet aged 31).

Director Sean Mathias’s production promises to be cast ‘age-blind’ though the full casting details are yet to be released. It begs so many questions: will Ophelia be in her eighties as well? How old will Claudius and Gertrude be? Will McKellen be playing an eighty-year-old Hamlet, or will he act the part as a younger man? Of course, all of this remains to be seen, but the concept of age-blind casting is an interesting one.

Shakespeare productions have long been adopting gender and/or race-blind casting policies. Hamlet was first played by a woman in 1796, and since then notable Princes of Denmark have included Frances de la Tour, Maxine Peake, and Paapa Essiedu. Black actress Cush Jumbo was due to take on the role this summer before the pandemic saw the production postponed. Age-blind casting has never been anywhere near as common.

In 2010, England’s prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre saw a production of Romeo and Juliet set in a retirement home with an elderly pair of star-crossed lovers. Yet, this cannot really be called ‘age-blind’ so much as ‘age-adjusted’ as it was clearly a creative decision that demanded older actors to play the titular hero and heroine.

Siân Phillips and Michael Byrne in Juliet and Her Romeo. Photograph: Neil Libbert

In schools, colleges, and universities worldwide, age-blind casting has always been the case, because all the actors are young people and some of them inevitably must play characters much older than themselves. In professional theatre, where diversity among actors is abundant, it is common practice to audition and cast actors regardless of their race, but the same cannot be said for age.

On one hand, maybe age-blind casting offers opportunities. It definitely can’t be argued that Ian McKellen – winner of six Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony, a Golden Globe, and two Oscar nominations among numerous other accolades – has been deprived of opportunities during his career, and, at any rate, he has played Hamlet before. Yet, older actors are rarely cast as the heroes of Hollywood blockbusters or in stage productions, unless the lead has been written specifically as an older character, perhaps most famously King Lear.

Older female actors particularly struggle against ridiculous standards that see creative industries favor younger actresses. Any development in age-blind casting might at least remind a male-dominated industry that older women deserve important and interesting acting roles.

Additionally, the pandemic has raised a lot of questions about accessibility to the arts, particularly the proliferation of online theatre making it more available to performers and creatives regardless of location and ableness. As the world opens again and older actors may continue to shield themselves for their own safety, online theatre might allow some to continue working in age-blind shows.

However, age is generally a more defining part of a character than their gender or race. For example, a play about a parent and child may use actors of any ethnicity or gender, but surely audiences would expect the parent to be played by someone older and the child by someone younger.

Of course, this isn’t a perfect rule, and I can list endless occasions when the ages of actors and their characters did not align, such as Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in Grease, Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility, or Rachel McAdams and Amy Poehler in Mean Girls. Yet all those actors were at least made to look a certain age – surely Ian McKellen is not going to be transformed into a fresh-faced twentysomething Hamlet every evening?

An elderly Hamlet will inevitably have a different relationship with Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Horatio, and even his late father, and the ages of all these characters will further complicate that. This complexity is not so inevitable when casting the play race or gender-blind (though, of course, race and gender can and have been used as driving forces in many productions of Hamlet).

Age-blind casting is an interesting idea, but it doesn’t seem possible that such a decision can ever be made ‘blind’ because characters’ ages have a substantial and significant impact on their relationships and situations.

The decision to cast age-blind may always be an artistic one and never come into common practice, but McKellen’s post-pandemic Hamlet will surely be worth watching if only to see one theatrical legend playing another.

Should We Cast ‘Age-Blind’?

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