This week BBC One showed a single drama, Framed, a story about the use of an old slate mine in North Wales to store the National Gallery's treasures. I don't want to talk here about the piece's quality as a drama per se - what I'm specifically interested in is that the film was cast with South Walian actors, speaking in South Walian accents, while being set in North Wales - a fact which has caused some controversy.

Framed was a network drama, aiming at a network audience, most of whom would simply not be aware of the difference between South and North Walian accents. And while there are no doubt very talented North Walian actresses, I can't think of any who would be familiar to a mainstream BBC One audience in the way Eve Myles is. So for the Beeb in London, it's straightforward - cast Trevor Eve as the handsome incomer (obligatory in any network drama set in Wales), cast unmistakably talented and Welsh Eve Myles as the co-lead, you've got two BBC One faces and away you go.

Except that it leaves at least some people in Wales feeling that 'their' BBC is a distant, external institution that has little to do with them - and that, as one witty Facebook commentator put it, most TV gets made by people who see think of Britain as a kind of decorative green fringe that they can just about see on the far side of the M25.

Where does that leave theatre - and especially a theatre that is charged with being a national theatre? Is cultural accuracy - in terms of accent or dialect, say - something that's core to the work, or is just icing on the cake?

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This is a good question especially within theatre. I think a lot of things boil down to purpose. For example the primary function of the BBC program was to entertain an audience not to educate. Another good example of this was Brave Heart good film but not all ways sticking to Historical fact. I think theatre should follow these guide lines. If you are creating a piece to educate and inform then it's important to be as accurate as you can be. Entertainment on the other hand has more room to bend the truth in order to make a more interesting story or at least I think it dos.
A little low-brow perhaps, but I'm thinking here of one of the greatest mainstream musicals of all, Les Mis... and the way in which (in the English adaption at least) the French peasant inn-keeper and his wife are portrayed as proper knees-up cockneys. (as are many of the characters)

I bet the French had/have a lot more to to say about that than North Walians.

Except that for millions of people, they instantly relate to the charm and warmth of those characters. It's obviously not accurate, but it's a million times more sincere than performing with dodgy French accents in the style of 'Allo 'Allo.

So I think rather than setting in stone an edict that says all work shall be performed in the "correct" dialect, it must be left to the director to decide what each piece requires to achieve maximum affect. Perhaps, however, there should always be an aspiration to be culturally accurate.

A second issue however is the apparent controversy caused by casting of South Walian actors to play North Walians (not the accent, the fact they were South Walians)... how parochial is that?!!

The whole thing does make me smile, however, because 10 years ago we'd have just been chuffed that network drama was being made in Wales, let alone argue over the dialect.
Now, I'm not sure if this is because I'm from North Wales but it seems absolutely ridiculous to me that you would make a drama based on an old slate mine in North Wales and not even bother to realise that they have a completely different accent.

Even if the purpose of the programme is to entertain surely the least they can do is get the accent right. I mean, you wouldn't make a tv drama based in New York with all the characters having a deep South accent. Just because we're a smaller country doesn't mean that it's ok for people to ignore the fact that we have diferent accents in different areas. I mean, would they make a BBC drama set in Yorkshire using Cockney actors? Of course not and if they did, even if it was a program 'to entertain' the first thing you'd say is "that's ridiculous. They're obviously not from Yorshire".

I'm sure you've gathered that this is something that really gets me!

But my ranting aside, in terms of a national theatre, it's a great question and one that is definitely being answered with the 12 productions around Wales next year. But of course, if what you're doing is taking a play from a South Waleian writer written for, understandably, South Waelian actors up to North, West or mid Wales, then you have that same detached, distant and external feeling.
It happens to the Scots too ... or it certainly used to. A fine actress called Caroline Paterson played Mark Fowler's wife. Caroline has a strong Glaswegian accent, yet the script constantly made references to her coming from Edinburgh - although the two cities are only 40 miles apart, the accents, the idiom, intonations etc are completely different! Everyone in both cities used to cringe or mutter or shout at the screen. I think the questions re whether the actors are from the place in which the play/programme is set and whether or not they're required to use an accent that is true to the voice used by that character are perhaps separate issues. And maybe the issues are different in relation to tv and theatre given that MOST tv strives for a semblance of realism, whereas theatre can take many forms and plays with the audience's suspension of disbelief in many ways. You've opened up some really interesting questions here, Mr Owen!
But, Bethan, there are many dialects of what we Welsh (or any other part of the UK) would class as a straight "Yorkshire" accent, and just as with Welsh the dialect can vary from village to village.

Is a drama set in a particular part of Yorkshire cast with actors who can speak in the dilect of that village? Doubt it.
To use Bethan's NY example - you would find that if filming in New York, then TV makers normally would cast actors who could do a Brooklyn accent to play a Brooklyn resident; people from the Bronx would normally be shown with a Bronx accent...whether those actors are from Brooklyn or from the Bronx might not matter if they can at least do the accent well enough but then some local actors who have native actors are overlooked in favour of "named" actors who can 'do' the accent... I think accuracy is important if we are going for truth but it doesn't always need to be real.
I agree.

How about a speculative theory/observation here?

I think it's insightful to consider factual programmes as well. When the BBC started it was all about cut glass "Standard English" accents and they slowly allowed regional accents. (My inclination here would be to plot the acceptance of different accents on a graph over time, but I'll resist for now.)

Anyway, even in 2009 there are certain accents which remain "pariah" or "taboo" accents which you seldom hear on factual programming. I think that has an effect on audience awareness or perceived audience awareness when it comes to drama.

For instance, you seldom heard anything like a Brummie accent on factual programmes for a long time. I'm willing to be corrected on this though! I remember when Adrian Chiles emerged on Working Lunch (a good while back) and it struck me that I'd never heard a Brummie-esque accent in that context before - allowing someone knowledgeable about business to have that platform. (I guess I'd heard Brummie-esque accents in drama before but the main one that springs to mind is Timothy Spall performing a working class role in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet!)

Let's face it, you hardly ever hear a north Walian accent on UK-wide TV ever, full stop.

Is it related to lack of acceptance of the accent - or a lack of supply of north Walians to UK TV?

There are remaining stereotypes around accents too, I think. The best example I can think of is when people put on fake Yorkshire accents to signify unpretentious, no-nonsense, "down-to-earth" thinking.
If it helps, imagine I’m talking in a thick Yorkshire accent, I leave you to choose where in Yorkshire. The idea is to entertain. If you can do it with an absolutely authentic accent well great fine but don't lose sight of why people come and pay their money. I want to be entertained. I know Dr Who isn’t really a time lord but I’m willing to believe he is while the program is on. I know Mimi doesn’t really die in La Boheme and very often the soprano looks far from consumptive, but I still cry every time. Is it good, does it draw me in, do I believe, sympathise, empathise & probably other words ending in ise. If the answer is yes I was transported I was somewhere else I didn’t realise an hour had passed till the lights came up for the ice creams then it all worked. If I can forget I’m even in a theatre I can for sure ignore the fact that the New York accent is more Brooklyn when it should be Bronx. Is the accent nearer Llanelli than Dolgelli? I’m not sure I much care. Is it good acting, do I believe in the character ? Damn right I care.
No, it doesn't matter, unless it impacts on the story.

Put it this way, Shakespeare was from Stratford, the plays were performed mainly in London, but how many midlands & cockney accents have been associated with his works through the years? It's all done in RP, where did that come from?
Surely the way a character speaks is part of that character, and that character is also part of the setting/s they come from? If the setting - geographical, historical, whatever - is important to the drama, it seems to be ignoring something very important if the characters do not speak in appropriate ways.

Also, accent is only part of character portrayal, in the same way making the voice higher is only one way for a male actor to portray a female character. Britain doesn't just have a wonderful range of accents, it also has a fabulous range of dialects. Shakespeare used rhythms as well as words to depict the sounds of the melting pot around him, and this has been used or ignored depending on the times.

There are always many disparate agendas when any piece of work is developed. Some are always considered more 'important' than others, depending on the zeitgeist. Let's hope discussions like this keep the Use of Language item well up on the agenda. It's all about communication, after all!

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