A star of the Frozen musical has hit out at a group of audience members who stormed out of the show in protest over his casting.
Obioma Ugoala, who plays trusty side-kick Kristoff in the musical, accused the "four audience members in their fifties" of racism in a Twitter thread titled #RepresentationMatters.
Nigerian-Irish actor Ugoala trained at London's Drama Centre and appeared in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Henry V and The Mouse and his Child before taking to the stage in the hit Disney musical Frozen, per The Independent.
However, clearly, his casting did not go down well with certain audience members, who he described as "[leaving] the show, bemoaning my casting as Kristoff as 'woke culture silliness'" during a Wednesday night (March 24) performance in London's West End.
Now, Ugoala has slammed the audience members in a Twitter thread.
"I love playing this show night after night at the DRURY LANE playing a love interest in a Disney Musical opposite the cream of the crop of the talent the West End has to offer. It is the stuff of dreams for this little brown boy," he wrote.
"For those four audience members in their 50s who left the show, bemoaning my casting as Kristoff as 'woke culture silliness', I feel sorry for you that this Nigerian-Irish Londoner selling ice with a reindeer as a BFF in a fictional land is a step too far for you," he continued.
"I am sorry that in a world of Ice Queens and magic strikes, this 'd*****' as you referred to me was outside of your imagination. Perhaps you presumed you were safe to speak of me that way, not feeling you’d be overheard... My Afro hair and melanated skin beyond the scope of what you could fathom," the thread went on.
Ugoala then said that he wished the men could have seen the show with the same innocence of [its] child fans. "But, sirs and madams, night after night, I see hundreds of children watch our talented cast of all hues and colors and escape into a magical world for two hours. I wish you had their eyes," he wrote.
The actor wrapped up the post by saying he dared to dream that the world was changing. "The sadness that you left me with tonight will be replaced tomorrow morning with the renewed zeal of one reminded we still have work to do," he wrote.
And if you would like to go and see Ugoala perform in the hit Disney show, check out the London Frozen musical website here for ticket availability.