Why did the actors keep their regional accents?
I’ve had difficulties believing in certain characters, i.e. a Northern Irish Pilate and a scouse Barabbas! Nick Thorne, Kent We thought long and hard about the issue of accents. We could, for instance, have asked all the actors to work in what’s called RP (Received Pronunciation) – what you might expect if you watched a traditional performance of Shakespeare at the RSC. However, one of the most important aims for us was to make the story seem as real and as immediate as possible. And when you go out on to the streets in your everyday life you are not surrounded by people speaking RP. So to use it would be to insert a sense of distance, a historicism you might say, that would run counter to what we were trying to achieve. We therefore decided to be “accent blind” – to allow the actors to speak in their natural voices, just as they would have done at the time. Palestine in 33 AD would have been rife with regional accents, even with different languages. We were very happy with the results
