OTHELLO
It was Shakespeare’s birthday last month – his 449th – and it coincided with a devastating, but exhilarating, opening night at the National Theatre of a revival of Othello, the Bard’s searing tragedy about jealousy, and a timely reminder that his best work has not dated one jot. Sir Nick Hytner’s moderndress production could hardly feel more current. It opens with Rory Kinnear’s oikish Iago, Othello’s right-hand man, swilling beer with his mates outside a very English-looking pub in Venice. He is bitter about not getting a promotion and chooses to believe the groundless rumour that Othello has slept with his wife, Emilia, in order to justify his revenge. His first task is to wake up Brabantio with the news that his daughter, Desdemona, has secretly married the much older black general, Othello.
One of the most striking aspects of Hytner’s impressively lucid account of the play is its detailed examination of every character’s motivation. What they wear speaks volumes to class, age and attitude. The trad and shamelessly racist Brabantio comes down from his bedroom with a Barbour and ochre corduroys pulled over his immaculately pressed cotton pyjamas, and rails, partly out of grief but mainly fury, that his ‘jewel’ has been ‘stolen’ by this coloured outsider.
Iago wears a zipped blouson jacket and Dr Martens. Olivia Vinall’s tiny blonde Desdemona, a sweet slip of a thing, bounds around in Capri pants and espadrilles. In his rolled-up red chinos and deck shoes, Rodrigo, the drippy chinless wonder who fancies Desdemona, looks as if he’s walked out of Made In Chelsea. We see Adrian Lester’s tall, dark, muscular and distinguished Othello for the first time putting cufflinks on his double-cuffed, Daz-white shirt. In his well-cut navy suit, he looks every inch the Obama-like statesman – authoritative, charismatic, calm.
But everything changes when the action shifts to the soulless, macho military unit in Cyprus, all prefab buildings and flat-pack furniture and no more than the bare essentials, and everyone but Desdemona is in camouflage kit. Othello’s first big mistake is letting Desdemona visit him; his second is the rapturous welcoming snog. Of course, he’s married very late (his temples are greying), and the war has robbed him of his honeymoon, but even so, the lads are terribly embarrassed.
In a terrifying scene, the toxic Iago sits at his laptop in Othello’s office and with just a few telling ums and ahs and the odd pointed words, such as ‘Beware my Lord of jealousy, the greeneyed monster’, he turns the besotted, trusting, noble new husband into a crazed, savage murderer, crying, ‘Why did I marry?’ – it’s an astonishing, unmissable double act in a ripping, gripping revival.
At the Olivier Theatre, Southbank, London SE1: 020- 7452 3000, www.nationaltheatre.org.uk – to book the live broadcast in cinemas on 26 September: www.ntlive.com