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Dateline: 21st June, 2007
Britain's First Black Actor Remembered Ira Aldridge (1807 - 1867), the first black actor to perform on the British stage, will be commemorated at the Old Vic on Sunday 8th July with a performance of Splendid Mummer by Lonne Elder. Shango Baku will play Aldridge and in the cast will be Earl Cameron, Rudolph Walker, Ray Fearon, Joseph Mydell, Dona Croll, Burt Caesar, Victor Romero Evans and Danny John-Jules. Born in New York, Aldridge was intended for the ministry but decided he wanted to be an actor and emigrated to Britain. His first appearance was in 1825 at the Royal Coberg Theatre (now the Old Vic) as Oroonoko in The Revolt of Surinam, or A Slave's Revenge, where he was billed as "a man of colour". He was enthusiastically received by the public but the critics hated him, the Times going so far as to say that he could not pronounce English properly "owing to the shape of his lips." He went on to tour extensively throughout Britain and after his performance in Othello in Scarborough he was described as"an actor of genius". But newspaper racist attacks continued and no Lonodn theatre would employ him. He left Britain and toured extensively throughout Europe, from Belgium to Russia, where he was particularly popular. One Russian critic even said that the evenings on which he saw Aldridge's Othello, Lear, Shylock and Macbeth "were undoubtedly the best that I have ever spent in the theatre" and he became the highest paid actor in Russia. He eventually did perform again in London, at the Lyceum, but the attacks continued and he once more toured Europe, dying at the age of 59 in Lodz in Poland. Splendid Mummer plays for one performance only at the Old Vic on 8th July. Tickets are from £10 to £22.50 and the performance starts at 7.30.
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