LETTER: Best Choice

We would like to respond to The Daily Pennsylvanian's preview of our production of Anything Goes (DP 2/27/92). The DP remarked that the audience must suspend its disbelief in order to accept that the characters cannot recognize the disguised Billy Crocker because Billy is portrayed by the only black man in the show. We join unanimously in the position that the color of someone's skin should not be a factor in making casting decisions. Todd Cox is a talented actor and was far and away the best choice for the role. The show does not suffer because of the color of Todd's skin. All musicals, including Anything Goes, require some suspensions of disbelief on the part of the audience. The stage is not an ocean liner, the actor who plays an English gentleman is not English and so forth. This is all part of the fantasy and entertainment of a stage production. Perhaps what must be suspended is the disbelief that there could ever be a place, even on the stage, where skin color would make no difference -- where people would be judged for who they are and what they do, and not for what they look like. LAURA GASSER Producer Law School Light Opera Company Signed by 21 other members