Some reviews:
Othello
Sell-out houses at Oxford Playhouse this week are greeting Frantic Assembly’s superb revival, with Theatre Royal Plymouth, of Shakespeare’s Othello, in a production first seen to huge acclaim six years ago. Around me in the stalls at Tuesday’s opening was an audience of A-level students stunned into startled silence, a happy condition not easily achieved with those of their age group.
But this is a tragedy stripped down, sexed up and translated into the present day (adapters Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett) in a way that proves the themes it tackles — jealousy, revenge, envy, among them — are indeed truly timeless.
Pounding, relentless music drives along the action, transforming into the moody and menacing when the moment demands. There is eye-popping choreography for all members of the cast, who seem as much acrobats as actors. Laura Hopkins’s set takes on a life of its own, with a multi-hinged back wall that writhes snake-like to suggest, for instance, how things feel for poor Cassio (Ryan Fletcher) after he is made drunk by Iago (Steven Miller) as a prelude to his disgrace. The method by which this is done — as shot follows shot in a competitive drinking game — strikes exactly the right note for the milieu we’re drawn into.
This is a seedy bar — northern to judge by most of the accents — frequented by a chavvy gang dominated through violence by Othello (Mark Ebulue), a man rarely without a baseball bat in his hands.
A lot of the action, including the sexual, centres on the pool table where, during a tense game, Iago first stirs his boss’s seeds of doubt concerning the conduct of his wife, Desdemona (Kirsty Oswald). Her championing of the aforementioned Cassio in his disgrace comes to play an important part in the case he craftily builds against her.
So, most crucially, does her dropped handkerchief, an episode boldly handled here in a way that overcomes one of the principal problems over it. In most productions of Othello, you are left wondering why the good-sort Emilia (Leila Crerar here), who has handed the talismanic love token to husband Iago, doesn’t speak up when she starts to see the nefarious purpose to which he is putting it. On this occasion, director Scott Graham invents a confrontation in which he can be seen (but not heard) exerting pressure to gain her silence.
In 100-gripping minutes, without interval, the action proceeds ineluctably towards its bloody conclusion, in violent scenes which in their modern context bear every mark of authenticity.
As I said, stunning.
Theatre
Othello
- You will never have seen an Othello quite like this. Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett of Frantic Assembly take a broken bottle to Shakespeare's text and give it an expert gutting. The heart of the play remains intact, and it pulsates bloodily. This is not Shakespeare for purists, but it has undoubted vision and verve. There is plenty wrong with it - music that often swamps the verse, actors who are sometimes more physically than vocally competent, a failure at the climactic moment to ratchet up an emotional gear into genuine tragedy - but a lot is right, too. This production is violently watchable.
- What is most startling is how effectively and seamlessly the action has been transposed from Venice to the less salubrious setting of a pub in a decaying, northern England working-class town. It is a place with its own distinct rules and male-dominated social hierarchy, where Desdemona and Emilia exchange confidences and fags in the ladies' loo. Here, bouncer Othello's (Jimmy Akinbola) rise to become top dog, snaffling Desdemona from under her father's nose along the way, has created tensions - social, racial and romantic - that Iago exploits. Charles Aitken is superb as the lethal bully who disguises his own envy and vulnerability by exploiting the jealousies of others, particularly the runt-like Roderigo, whose eyes constantly follow Desdemona around the pub.
Yes, the flat northern vowels scrape the verse, but it is robust enough to survive. As love and death are played out upon the pool table amid the broken bottles and piss, it feels as if Shakespeare hasn't been buried, but honoured and imaginatively reinvented for 21st-century audiences.
Othello
Frantic Assembly's Othello is superb
By Karen Busell •
© Manuel Harlan
The deserved rapturous applause from a mainly student audience is testament to Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett's adaptation and choreography.
The Bard's iconic tragic tale of scheming, sex and murder is brought bang up-to-date with hoodies, chavs and bottled lager as pool cues substitute the sword, and gang warfare is rife.
Set in a seedy Northern bar with pool table, plastic leather banquette and flashing fruit machine, nine actors populate the stage as plots and paranoia abound.
A convincing and somewhat noble Mark Ebulue leads the macho posturing with muscles rippling as the eponymous Moor manipulated by his jealous and devious henchman Iago (a nicely poisonous Steven Miller).
Caught in the web of intrigue are Cassio (Ryan Fletcher, whose drunken antics are a delight) and lovelorn bruiser Roderigo (Richard James-Neale) while Kirsty Oswald is spot-on as Desdemona – doting, sensual and increasingly bewildered.
Designer Laura Hopkins' eye for detail is tremendous – Desdemona and Emilia (Leila Crerar) locked in the grotty Ladies discussing the boys; testosterone-pumped, trackie-clad louts lusting after the lissom lasses; and more – while Graham's direction is pacy, athletic and vital.
With the pool table doubling as the marital bed and murder scene, wobbly walls that add dimension to the action, slo-mo moments emphasising the rapid slide to unavoidable destruction, and Hybrid's pounding rave soundtrack, this is a visceral, unmissable, uninterrupted 120 minutes.
