When pictures were recently leaked of James Norton naked on stage in A Little Life, I struggled to understand why. In the West End adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s cult novel, the actor plays Jude, a character who is repeatedly abused, raped and humiliated; the nudity is not intended to arouse. Was the aim to allow people to ogle the Happy Valley star? Or was it simply a provocative attempt to exert power over Norton in a vulnerable moment, a transgression of the rules of theatre etiquette? Previews had hardly begun before surreptitiously taken snaps of Norton sans clothes ended up online, published briefly on MailOnline before being taken down. The breach felt ironic, considering each night he performs the role of a person who has terrible things done to him. Yanagihara’s 700+ page novel, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2015, centres on the cycle of abuse Jude has found himself trapped in since childhood, leaving him so stained with shame that he keeps his past from his three best friends.
Naturally, a show with such challenging content demands courageous performances from its cast. But can such a project compel a name like Norton – or, frankly, any performer – to join its ranks if basic audience respect and safety can’t be guaranteed? It’s like that saying, “this is why we can’t have nice things”. Whether your definition of a “nice thing” is a staging of an intense literary novel or simply Norton in the nuddy, the taking of these pictures puts both in peril.
