Are we ready for a black Queen Victoria?

The integrity and passion of a performance transcend literal objections

Nicholas Hytner will open his account as director of the National Theatre next spring with a small theatrical revolution. By casting the highly talented black actor Adrian Lester as King Henry V he is effectively proclaiming that the National has a colour-blind policy towards casting; if you're good enough you can play any part, even a king whom we know was white. That foreknowledge no longer matters. The Royal Shakespeare Company too officially proclaims a colour-blind casting policy. They indeed cast a black Henry VI last year.

The stance at last being adopted by the two major subsidised companies will be welcomed by actors, directors and most audiences. But soon Hytner and his colleagues are going to have to ask themselves more complex questions; they are going to have to ask themselves whether they really can have totally colour-blind casting policies.

I believe that we have – to the relief of all of us who want to see more opportunities for actors from ethnic minorities – now accepted that black actors can be cast in pretty well any Shakespearean role. Somehow the integrity and passion of a performance transcend literal objections that a courtier or king from hundreds of years ago could not historically have been black.

But things become more difficult when it comes to playing historical figures much closer to the present day. Could a black actress play Queen Victoria? She is a woman whose face we know well, whose mannerisms we feel we know well. The same arguments that make me delighted that Adrian Lester is playing Henry V should apply here; but somehow they don't. A black actress playing Queen Victoria or a black actor playing Winston Churchill could be as disconcerting as a white actor playing Nelson Mandela.

And what of plays set in contemporary or near-contemporary times where colour again becomes a factor? Shortly before Hytner stages Henry V at the National, his predecessor as NT director, Trevor Nunn, stages A Streetcar Named Desire. Now, if we had a 100 per cent colour-blind casting policy, Mr Nunn could and would cast a black actress as Blanche Dubois, the former southern belle. But such casting could not but raise distracting questions in the minds of the audience.

Black people in the deep south of the United States at the time the play is set had a position in society with which we are all too familiar; and that fact would dominate and detract from a performance, however strong. It's strange, isn't it. Henry V, whom we know to be white, can be played by a black actor, and will probably be played brilliantly by a black actor and open up the role to black actors henceforward. But Blanche Dubois, who never actually existed, is almost certainly closed to black actresses.

It is a subject I look forward to hearing Nicholas Hytner pronounce upon. We may well be at the start of a hugely exciting and liberating time for multi-ethnic casting. But it would be foolish to pretend there are no caveats, or that colour-blind casting is as easy and as all-embracing as it sounds.

*As we campaigned in this paper for free admission to national museums, I was pleased to see that visitor numbers have increased enormously since free admission was introduced. But I am a little sceptical about the precision with which the figures are bandied about. As there are no ticket sales, electronic sensors or old-fashioned turnstiles, I wondered how these figures are collated. The Tate tells me that they are collated in an endearingly low-tech, old-fashioned way. A warder stands at the entrance with a clicker which he clicks every time someone enters. How does he keep up when a family, large group or school party rushes by him, I wonder. Is he ever tempted to do a few extra clicks on the sly in case he feels he missed someone? Naturally, when a visitor goes out to feed a parking meter and returns, that visitor would be clicked twice and count as two visitors. Perhaps in the end the double clicks make up for the missed clicks and it all evens out. But we are taking rather a lot on trust.

*Philip Roth may be a Pulitzer prize winner, but his intricate writings, with the plot often progressing through interior monologues, have not appealed to film makers. No film has been made of his work since Portnoy's Complaint in 1972. But now Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman are shooting Roth's latest, The Human Stain. In this adaptation of the enthralling book about a college professor with a secret, Hopkins plays the ageing academic and, in what seems odd casting, Kidman plays the abused, poverty-stricken cleaner with whom he has an affair. The New York Times went on to the set with Roth and reports that "Mr Roth seemed pleased to see his characters materialise in front of the cameras... he and Ms Kidman talked about plans for dinner that night."

There's a great novelist for you – always researching the next book.

d.lister@independent.co.uk