The National Theatre is set to spark more race controversy today with a production in which black actors will "white up".

Performers in Death and the King's Horseman by Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka will don white make-up in a reversal of the reviled practice of white actors "blacking up" for roles, as did Laurence Olivier in Othello in 1964.

The run which starts next month will follow a fierce row over stereotyping in Richard Bean's play England People Very Nice about East End immigrants.

Director Rufus Norris said the move to have some of his black cast play white British colonials had not been taken lightly. "The approach has been to frame the play as a ritual performed by a group of Yoruba story-tellers," he said. "They play the black and the white parts - and the bushes and at one point all the windows of a house."

Soyinka thought it was an apt way to avoid the drama, based on a true story of how colonial authorities prevented a Yoruba ritual suicide in 1943, being seen as "simply a criticism of the colonial era," the director said.

"The danger is it could be seen as a white versus black culture clash. But the play is much more than that. Soyinka's main [target for] criticism is irresponsible leadership."

Norris added: "What I hope is for an audience to get an intelligent critique of an important piece of African literature by a writer who is under-performed in this country, bearing in mind we have a large West African community." The play has had only one performance in this country, at the Manchester Royal Exchange 19 years ago. A spokesman for actors' union Equity said they had a problem with "blacking up" but not with this. "Our issue with 'blacking up' is to do with crude racial stereotyping following years of discrimination. But we have no problem with cross-racial casting. You don't have to have people with Danish blood cast as Hamlet."

But lawyer Mark Stephens, of Finers Stephens Innocent, said with white actors "blacking up" considered "morally repugnant", the question was whether the situation could be reversed acceptably.

He said there would only be a discrimination issue if white people were not allowed to audition.

Death and the King's Horseman is at the National from 1 April to 17 June.

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