Approving the draft at yesterday's cabinet meeting President Jacques Chirac said the budget was compatible with France's European

Approving the draft at yesterday's cabinet meeting, President Jacques Chirac said the budget was "compatible with France's European commitments and in line with the objective of harmonising French and German policies". He said it was the first time a real effort had been made to halt the rise in public spending. The projected deficit for 1997 is 283.7bn francs (pounds 184bn), out of Fr1,552.9bn in total spending. The artistic directors of both the RSC and the National Theatre remain unwilling to risk offending sensibilities by casting a white actor in the role.. Paris - The French government nailed its colours to the mast of a single European currency yesterday, publishing a draft budget for 1997 that envisages a reduction in the domestic deficit to the 3 cent of gross domestic product required to meet the Maastricht criteria, writes Mary Dejevsky.

He added: "We have a very clear policy on integrated casting. Performers should be cast on their talent alone, not on ethnic origin, so we absolutely applaud the casting of a black Nancy."I can't think of something like this happening in the West End before."The new thinking in multi-racial casting begs other questions. While Mackintosh may have proved a liberalising factor in black playing white, it still seems unlikely that we will see a white actor following in the footsteps of Olivier, Schofield and Gambon and playing Othello at a national company. So is every role up for grabs by performers of all colours?The question has perplexed even the most progressive and thoughtful directors. John Caird, a former RSC associate director, once told me that though he was a proponent of multi-racial casting and had a brilliant black actress in the company, he would not cast a white Romeo and a black Juliet "because then you've got West Side Story". With Mackintosh's bold move, privately described by Equity officials as "courageous", that sort of worry may be a thing of the past.

Audiences at Swaby's first few performances have delighted in her portrayal. British audiences are perhaps becoming colour blind.Equity's spokesman Martin Brown described the casting of Swaby as "marvellous and very forward looking". We know that Henry V was not black, just as we know that Blanche Dubois was not black - and how the texture of A Streetcar Named Desire would change if she were played by a black actress But neither was Bill Sikes's girlfriend black. It is too confusing for audiences, directors have claimed, to have black actors playing parts we know were historically or by centuries of literary convention, white. Black actors and actresses are increasingly appearing on the British stage, but more often than not in new work or minor roles in the great literary works. But in mainstream theatre examples have been extremely rare.Now Mackintosh, who personally presided over the Nancy casting, has changed that.Quite where theatre and film directors go from here is intriguing. If a black actress can play Nancy, one of the best-known characters in English literature, and a character who was undoubtedly white, then why should a black actress not play Jane Austen's Emma or Thackeray's Becky Sharp or Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre or Emily Bronte's Cathy? Where would a white Heathcliff and a black Cathy leave Emily Bronte's hints of passion aroused by Heathcliff's dark complexion?For with the new possibilities come old concerns.