Tamsin Greig speaks out about critic who told actresses 'to get their mitts off male parts'

Tamsin Greig has attacked a theatre critic who described her as “androgynous” and a “comedy actress” in a piece questioning if gender-blind casting has gone too far.

The actress accused the Daily Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish of using “unenlightened vocabulary” to describe her performance in Twelfth Night at the National Theatre.

Greig, 50, has won glowing reviews for her reimagining of Malvolio, a male character, in Shakespeare’s comedy.

Cavendish wrote “Greig is the business” and “makes the part her own” in a three-star review that heaped praise on the actress but was less effusive about the production.

In a follow-up article titled asking “Is it curtains for the male actor?”, the critic asked if “gender-bending” casting has become too prevalent, mentioning Greig, Glenda Jackson’s King Lear at the Old Vic and the Donmar’s all-female Shakespeare season.

Cavendish said Greig’s performance “represents one small step for this androgynous star, one giant leap for womankind” but urged female thespians to “get their mitts off male parts”.

Greig was reported by The Stage to have said: “Dominic Cavendish said that he’d heard about this production and that he was suffering the grief of the death of the male lead.

“I have three things to say in response. Firstly, I think the great male lead will be okay. Secondly, he has been around in the business a long time and has a huge knowledge of theatre and he is mourning what he has always known. Finally, he would not have dared to say anything if it had been a black man playing Malvolio. He can’t have that conversation, but the fact that it was a woman playing it, he could.”

Greig, who won an Olivier for her performance as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing in 2007 and has been twice nominated for her stage work, is perhaps best known to the public for her TV work in comedies such as Black Books, Green Wing and Episodes.

Speaking at a discussion event at the National on Friday, she added: “It was slightly unenlightened vocabulary, using ‘comedy’, ‘actress’, and ‘androgynous’, and also saying ‘star’, because this is an ensemble.”

The Standard’s critic Henry Hitchings awarded the show four stars writing: “Tamsin Greig is brilliant in the part.” He said female actors being cast in male Shakespearean roles was “nothing new” and dates to the 18th century.

It is not the first time an actor has taken umbrage at a critic. Dame Judi Dench described the Telegraph’s Charles Spencer as an “absolute shit” for his scathing review of her performance in Madame de Sade in 2009.