the times | Thursday November 26 2020 1GM 25
News
An actress who was fired from a stage
production of The Color Purple for an
anti-gay post on Facebook has lost the
first round of her legal battle.
Lawyers for Seyi Omooba, who is de-
voutly religious, said that the ruling cast
doubt over whether Christians could
“express Biblical mainstream views”
without fear of losing their jobs.
Mr Justice Griffiths, sitting in the em-
ployment appeal tribunal, ruled yester-
day that a renowned theatre critic
could not support Omooba, 26, in court
with an expert evidence report.
The judge rejected arguments made
Judge Elliott’s earlier ruling rejecting
further evidence from Martin Parsons,
a theology expert.
Mr Justice Griffiths said that the
critic’s report was “full of opinion” that
read like a “piece of journalism”.
A trial of Omooba’s religious discrim-
ination and breach of contract claim is
scheduled to run for 11 days next Febru-Christian actress loses appeal in anti-gay case
Jonathan Ames Legal Editor from her lawyers that Lloyd Evans, a
critic for the Spectator, should be al-
lowed to give evidence in her claim for
religious discrimination and breach of
contract against the production com-
pany and her agent.
Omooba was fired from the musical
adaptation of the Alice Walker novel
last year. She was cast to play the lead
character of Celie, generally read as
being a lesbian, at the Curve in Leices-
ter and the Birmingham Hippodrome.
In the Facebook post, the actress
wrote that she did “not believe that
homosexuality is right”. She has
claimed that the theatre company and
her agents told her to apologise for the
posting but she refused, claiming that
her comments merely quoted the Bible.
Omooba also claimed that she had
been subjected to racial abuse on social
media since she was sacked. In her legal
claim against the agency and the pro-
duction company, her lawyers aimed to
submit evidence from Evans, who had
said that “it is not of any importance for
an actor to agree with the ethical views
or the feelings of a character in a play”.
Judge Elliott, sitting in the employ-
ment tribunal, originally blocked the
critic’s evidence on the grounds that it
was either biased or not relevant. The
appeal tribunal upheld that ruling.
Mr Justice Griffiths also upheldary. Responding to the ruling, she said:
“It is upsetting but we are determined to
keep fighting for justice.”
Andrea Williams, chief executive of
the Christian Legal Centre, which is
representing Omooba, said: “Two ex-
perts in their field have now been
silenced in this crucial case for Christ-
ian freedom. Are we really saying that
Christians should not be actors?”
The two theatres said in a joint state-
ment at the time of her sacking that her
comments had triggered “significant
and widely expressed concerns on
social media and in the wider press”.
The actress’s agency, Global Artists,
declined to comment.Seyi Omooba, 26,
wrote about her
Biblical viewsChildren should be introduced to
Shakespeare in the theatre, not in the
classroom, Dame Helen Mirren has
said.
Speaking at an event hosted by the
Royal Shakespeare Company, she said
that 11-year-olds could be put off “dron-
ing through” Shakespeare in lessons
and should first see it live.
“I don’t think Shakespeare should be
taught in schools,” she said. “All young
people’s experience of Shakespeare
should be live theatre.
“If it sparks something now, go back
to the text,” she said, adding that
the greatest challenge in communicat-
ing and understanding Shakespeare
was “making this sometimes archaic
language alive and accessible... not
alienating”.
Mirren was invited to join the RSC in
1965, and with the company played Ro-
salind in As You Like It. She later played
Cleopatra alongside Alan Rickman in a
Emma Yeomans
Classroom Shakespeare kills
children’s interest, says Mirren
1998 production of Antony and Cleopa-
tra at the National Theatre.
Some of her earliest acting memories
were of Shakespeare, she said, includ-
ing performing at Stratford-upon-
Avon as a Roman citizen in Coriolanus.
She recalled: “We’d all stand in the
wings muttering: ‘Hot, hungry, 500BC’
— our method acting.”
She also appeared on screen in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1968 and
played Prospera in a 2010 gender-
swapped film version of The Tempest
that was filmed in Hawaii.
Talking to Gregory Doran, the RSC’s
artistic director, she said that gender-
swapped casting in theatre was giving
women more opportunities to play
great roles. “I’m so happy now that
women can do Hamlet, do Richard III,
do Lear, as Glenda [Jackson] just did,”
she said.
“It certainly was beyond any possi-
bility when I was in my twenties,
thirties, forties, fifties, sixties. It was just
impossible.”Regal pose Vanessa Kirby, 32, who plays Princess Margaret in The Crown, is in
Esquire magazine this month. “On a piano, [Margaret] is all the scales,” she says
TOM CRAIG/ESQUIRE UK