# Are There Any Broadway Roles That Can Be Played By Men \*OR\* Women? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 3, 2014, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-broadway-roles-that-can-be-played-by-men-or-women/706249 "2014-12-03T19:40:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2014, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-broadway-roles-that-can-be-played-by-men-or-women/706249/41 "2014-12-23T22:05:54Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > Edna Turnblatt in _Hairspray_ is always played by a male, although I guess technically there’s no reason why a large woman couldn’t play her. I think it’s high time, actually; it’s become gimmicky. Imagine what Melissa McCarthy could have done with that role over John Travolta. Eve-of-Blessed-Memory mentioned how much she’d like to see the Emcee in _Cabaret_ played by a Marlene Dietrich-y female. [QUOTE=Flywheel] In the 1990s Broadway revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Whoopi Goldberg played Pseudolus. [/QUOTE] I’ve wondered how that worked, since an important part of the plot involves Pseudolous pretending to shop for a wife. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2014, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-broadway-roles-that-can-be-played-by-men-or-women/706249/42 "2014-12-24T00:03:28Z")
It’s ballet, but I saw a great _Cinderella_ where the wicked stepsisters were played by guys…they were hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![Elemenopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b5e925/32.png) [@Elemenopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elemenopy)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-broadway-roles-that-can-be-played-by-men-or-women/706249/43 "2014-12-27T05:14:14Z")
This summer I saw a semi-amateur production of Romeo and Juliet with Mercutio played by a very handsome, lanky young woman (not in drag). I don’t know if that’s a regular thing or not, but I thought it was a fantastic casting. ---
**Author:** ![Analogue\_Skywalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Analogue\_Skywalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Analogue_Skywalker)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-broadway-roles-that-can-be-played-by-men-or-women/706249/44 "2014-12-27T08:21:23Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > In the 2005 Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd, Pirelli was played by a woman, though he’s normally played by a man. My wife played Pirelli in a production of Sweeney Todd as well ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-broadway-roles-that-can-be-played-by-men-or-women/706249/45 "2014-12-27T12:47:05Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > The children cast in \*The King and I \*are almost always of whatever convenient genders casting calls dredge up, with the exception of Louis and the eldest son and heir Prince Chulalongkorn. Ditto the kid in _Miss Saigon_ - the character is indisputably a boy, but the actor may be any gender. For what it’s worth, Lea Michele apparently understudied Gavroche but only ever got tapped as the alternate to play Cosette before turning down the role of Eponine. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-broadway-roles-that-can-be-played-by-men-or-women/706249/46 "2014-12-27T14:32:10Z")
Most courtroom dramas have the judge and attorneys written as men, but don’t have to be cast that way. There are some that are period pieces, and couldn’t use women, but most of them could. _The Bad Seed_ was more shocking in its time with a little girl as the title character, but I don’t see why a boy couldn’t be cast as the Bad Seed. Especially if you wrote it for the 21st century, so for the lines about the child wearing dresses could be replaced with lines about not wearing jeans and sneakers all the time. An 8-year-old boy in a button down shirt, dress shoes and slacks when he has the choice to be in jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers, has the same impact now, as a little girl who insisted on wearing dresses all the time did when the play came out. You could also go either way with the parent who is concerned about having passed on the bad seed, although that probably takes a little more rewriting. But the opposite parent being in the military and sometimes having several-day absences could work with a mother now. You could try _Same Time, Next Year_ with two men or two women. If you try it with two men, you need to come up with a device for the year the woman is pregnant-- maybe one of them just had a vasectomy. _Children of a Lesser god_ was a vehicle for the Deaf actress Phyllis Frelich, which is why the central couple is a Deaf woman and a hearing man. You could probably cast it the other way. Right now, casting them as a gay couple still adds too much baggage, and distracts from the central Deaf-hearing conflict, but in ten more years, that might not be the case. Casting _The Odd Couple_ as platonic, opposite-sex roommates might be interesting, except that in order to run counter to expectations, and make it funnier, you’d have to cast the Oscar character as the woman, and having a platonic straight couple might reinforce the assumption that the play works so hard to dispel-- that Felix is gay. Of course, it might not matter anymore. Not that you’d want to make him overtly gay, just that it might not be a problem anymore if some people assumed that. Actually, it might be fun if someone (if Neil Simon is getting too old, but would authorize someone else) would write a version where possibly old college friends, male and female, one out for a long time, one just out and just divorced, decided to room together, and had a fussy/messy conflict. In that case, you actually could play a fussy lesbian, and a messy gay man for laughs. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-broadway-roles-that-can-be-played-by-men-or-women/706249/47 "2014-12-27T19:15:19Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > _The Bad Seed_ was more shocking in its time with a little girl as the title character, but I don’t see why a boy couldn’t be cast as the Bad Seed. Go see _The Good Son_, with little Macauley Culkin. No, don’t; it’s crap. But it made tons of money, and what you said was probably the pitch. (Well, that and _“The kid from HOME ALONE cheerily murder-pranks good people.”_) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-broadway-roles-that-can-be-played-by-men-or-women/706249.md?page=2)