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At the RSC this year's Othello and Desdemona were last year's Romeo and Juliet

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At the RSC, this year's Othello and Desdemona were last year's Romeo and Juliet. Zoe Waites has had to put on two to three years; Ray Fearon has had to put on 30 to 40. Fearon is the first black Othello on the Stratford stage since Paul Robeson in 1959. Of course, Fearon looks too young, but Michael Attenborough's lively new production (like his Romeo and Juliet of last year) is clear, involving and unfussy.

If it never quite takes off, the reason lies in the chemistry of the performances. The designer Robert Jones conjures up night-time Venice through shafts of light in a damp mistiness, and bathes daytime Cyprus in warm sunshine. Chairs and a golden globe stand for the council chamber in Venice; suitcases and crates stand for the quayside in Cyprus. The officers wear red tunics with red stripes down their trousers: the Venetian empire looks very like the British one This Edwardian period is just old enough. Their swords may be largely ceremonial, but when provoked, they use them in a fight. The drinking scene has the competitive upper-class rowdiness of the officers' mess.Fearon is not tall. When Richard Cordery's Brabantio accuses Othello of stealing his daughter, he towers over Fearon, reversing the traditional image of the ageing father confronting the warrior Moor But Fearon establishes a strong physical presence.

This Othello has a thick beard, ear-ring and shaved head; he begins slowly, revealing his status in the unhurried sincerity with which he spaces out words, finding three syllables, for instance, in "wondrous". Early on, it works; but when he has to compare his thoughts to the Pontic Sea, we wish his grandeur had more volume and depth. Emotionally and musically, this is the Diet Coke version.The impact that his youthfulness and lightness of tone has on the tragedy is redoubled by Richard McCabe's Iago. A natural comedian, McCabe plays Iago not as a comic role, but as a man with a deliberate comic persona: a portly, cherubic figure, with oily black hair and sideburns. He leaves us in no doubt that his malevolence is richly nourished, and we respond to the humour of his dastardly plotting There lies the flaw in the chemistry.

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