The shoe fits both ways: if I possibly have certain expectations about actresses of color (and I don't deny that I might, unconsciously at least), then I think all performers need to have some awareness of how they come across.
If I didn't care for the way McDonald played that one scene, my displeasure I think comes from the fact that it felt too modern, out of period. It seems incongruous to me that the Abbess of a cloistered convent in 1930s Austria should roll her eyes in mock exasperation. It's essentially a camp gesture because it is inappropriate. Part of that inappropriateness is that it emphasizes the convention of casting an African-American actress as a European character and therefore violates that convention for just a moment, pulling the viewer out of the story. We don't see the Mother Abbess at that moment; we see McDonald as the Mother Abbess.
I think this is a danger when any convention is invoked, which these days means when anyone attempts anything that is not typecasting. If, for example, you are going to have a 40 year old actor play King Lear, he needs to be very conscious of staying strictly in style, because any breach in that style is going to remind the audience that this is, in fact, just an actor playing a part, not King Lear himself.
Or, I could say, if an openly gay actor is playing a straight character: he needs to be meticulous about avoiding any sort of gesture that reads stereotypically "gay," because that is going to remind the audience of the convention in place.
Obviously this all applies only if you are working in a fairly naturalistic style, which this Sound of Music was doing.
I should emphasize this was the only "out of the moment" bit in McDonald's acting performance I could see, but it was grating.
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