Christopher Geelan's production of Shakespeare's tragedy about the black Venetian general laid low by a tornado of jealousy has big ambitions. It hopes to turn the play into a study of East-West tension, institutionalised racism, gender conflict and even class war. While there is much in the text to justify these themes, Geelan's modern-dress staging is still more convincing as a traditional tale of spite, gullibility, innocence and green-eyed rage. To whip-up this emotional storm it needs to be played with a blind momentum - a momentum which here sometimes stutters and stalls during gratuitous set changes. Inevitably, there is also the problem of anachronism, but Geelan's production is good where it needs to be most: in the performance of certain key scenes.
Most significantly, Geelan fills Bridget Kimak's sunny design of cyclorama and sandpit with good, broad characterisation. In particular, Rupert Wickham's Iago is a nerdish, Essex-man squaddie who grows ever more afraid and enamoured of the fury he unleashes in Nicholas Monu's Othello. Believing Iago's poisonous suggestion that Rebecca Johnson's Desdemona is an easy harlot, Monu is dangerously transported into tow ering fits of unpredictable rage, like Mike Tyson at a press conference. He finds himself pathetically isolated by virtue of his colour and of his hallow ed social status as an army top dog.
But Monu's baritone performance also offsets Othello's jealous tirades with proud, barrel-chested nobility. This provides a good, macho contrast to Johnson's girlish, yet emotionally mature Desdemona, although Desdemona's bug-eyed, Bambi-like innocence suggests a character well beneath the age of consent. Charles Armstrong, as her fatally favoured friend Cassio, is an aptly guileless Sloane caught in Iago's web as easily as Elliot Head's Roderigo - a weaselly hanger-on seedily hoping to grope the leading lady.
The extent to which Geelan illuminates the play's wider themes is doubtful. The extent to which his cast raises the emotional temperature is not.
Othello
