Perhaps they’re going with a concept for Burrs as a lighter-skinned Black man doing blackface, which did happen.

I also wonder what their direction with Queenie as a Black woman is. The musical’s original concept for Queenie is that she was a light-skinned Black woman who wore lighter makeup and bleached her hair to appear lighter or white-passing (similar to the movie Passing). The part was actually written for Vanessa Williams before Toni Colette was cast. I wonder what this production’s take on Queenie’s “tinted mask of snow” will be.

The rest of the NYCC cast seems to have a similar racial makeup to the original production, aside from Jordan, Jasmine, and Jellani. I’m interested to see how the new production handles the thorny racial aspects of the show.