Exit, left: is it curtains for the male actor?

As more actresses take on men’s roles in the theatre, we are in danger of viewing a cast of men as regressive

Contemplating this week’s big opening at the National – actress Tamsin Greig taking on the role of Malvolio in Twelfth Night – a strange, melancholy thought struck me. Is this curtains for the male actor? Greig’s landing of this much-loved male comic role, which has been re-gendered to become Malvolia, represents one small step for this androgynous star, one giant leap for womankind.

Although it’s not even the first instance of Twelfth Night being subject to snipping on the sexual and textual front (along the river at the Rose, Bankside, an even more radical experiment took place in 2015), this feels like a watershed moment.

We’ve had a lot of gender-bending and “gender-blind” casting in Shakespeare over the past year or so – a female Cymbeline at the RSC; Henry V played by Michelle Terry at the Open Air; Glenda Jackson’s King Lear at the Old Vic; an all-female trilogy at the Donmar, not to mention some of the innovations at Shakespeare’s Globe.

The National, though, is our flagship subsidised theatre and it’s leading the industry into a brave new world. From now on, we must ask, is any male part in the canon fair game for the “opposite” sex? And can we expect this tendency to extend across the classical repertoire?

The underlying aim, I hasten to add, is a noble one: to let actresses, too often consigned to subordinate roles (and only granted access to the stage in this country after the Restoration), a chance to feast on the best of drama. In so doing, they may yield fresh insights into masculinity, femininity and gender in general.

I don’t have an instinctive prejudice against such experimentation. In fact, I was positive about all productions cited above, and think Greig’s performance is marvellous, too. Even if gender is only one prism with which to look at human endeavour, I can grasp the point made by the actress Ruth Maleczech (who played a female Lear in 1987): “When a man has power, we take it for granted. But when a woman has power, we’re forced to look at the nature of power itself.”

My concern, though, is that in breaking down conventions and reaching for alternative insights, men are being elbowed aside. Redress the balance? Fine. Let in some fresh air? Great. But the entrenchment of this tendency may also be stifling. Greig said yesterday: “There is no part a woman can’t do.” So will every production that follows “conventional” casting now be deemed regressive? Will we even start to view plays that figure men in main, or majority, roles as detrimental to the cause of equality?

If that sounds ridiculous consider this from a Guardian commentator on seeing – and getting riled at – the current production of The Tempest at the RSC. “I came out cross,” railed Susanna Rustin, “wondering how it’s possible for a company receiving £16 million in public subsidy to put on big, expensive productions such as this in which female actors are so scarce.” Prospero had the temerity, you see, to get shipwrecked on a desert island with just his daughter. The second wreck – involving his usurping brother – piles more chaps on shore. Bad Bard!

Theatre-land is play-land – we suspend disbelief, we let our imaginations run free. Increasingly, however, I worry that play-land is being patrolled by the Thought Police. The most commonsensical way forward is that if one area of the RSC’s programme is, as a matter of historical course, male-dominated, it commissions compensating work. History is not short of dramatically fecund female characters. Consider Helen Edmundson’s excellent Queen Anne, which transfers to the West End this summer. But is common sense leaving the building – together with industriousness? Why bother finding new-minted female correlatives to Willy Loman or Jimmy Porter when you can just boot out the bloke, stick a woman in his place and defy anyone to raise an eyebrow?

Dare I also remark that if you stopped someone in the street and asked whether they thought actresses were getting a rough ride these days, the chances are that they’d demur. Wouldn’t they rave about Dames Dench, Mirren and Smith, Imelda Staunton, Helen McCrory, Sheridan Smith et al. Whether it’s Euripides or Wycherley, Chekhov or Ibsen, Ayckbourn or McGuinness, there are great roles galore for women. So, at the risk of sounding like a Carry On character – or, worse, being eviscerated on social media – I’d urge restraint, and issue a plea to female thespians to get their mitts off male actors’ parts!