Watching Othello once again in Sydney, my first thought is what a wonderful play it is. My second is what a sad mess the Bell Shakespeare Company has made of it.
Othello remains the world’s greatest investigation into the age-old theme of jealousy: the “green-eyed monster” that spurs Iago, rejected for a promotion, to evil deeds; and Othello, horrified by his wife’s supposed adultery, to murder.
Yet Othello touches on other subjects, too, as relevant today as they were in Elizabethan England. The lionisation of military strength. A cold, hard look at love, an emotion that isn’t always kind. Ugly misogyny in what remains a man’s world. Racism.
With such low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking, how did Bell’s new artistic director, Peter Evans – in charge of a national tour that kickstarted in Orange earlier this year and ends next month in Sydney – go so wrong?
Indeed, reviews have been so bad that the Australian announced the “plug should be pulled”. “Nothing in this production becomes it like the leaving of it,” wrote Chris Boyd in July. “You have until December to miss it.”
Months later, with the opportunity to raise their game squandered, I’d have to agree – but not because, as Boyd believes, Othello is an “unbearable play … 1600s torture porn, without redemption or relief”.
On the contrary, what strikes me most, sitting in the plush surrounds of the Opera House, is Shakespeare’s ability to drill down into the core of nasty human behaviour. Most shocking in Othello is the Bard’s exposure of brutality inside the home.
Four centuries ago, Shakespeare provided a reminder, as welcome now as it was then, that beatings and butchery happen not only among the poor and disadvantaged but also among the generals, the powerful, the rich, the glamorous. In Australia – a country still plagued by macho ideas of masculinity and domestic violence against women – that message remains painfully pertinent.
It’s a tragedy, then, that in this version everything from the set to the costumes to the acting suffers from a crime far worse than being just plain bad: it is boring.
Evans updates the setting to a vague present tense, dressing his male cast in casual khaki military uniforms, the “strumpet” Bianca in a trashy red dress and Desdemona in a pair of hideous wide-legged cropped peach pants.
There’s a pallid-green set, bare aside from a single plinth, that reeks of a stale corporate hotel banquet room. The actors, too, are beige. Yalin Ozucelik’s Iago riffs well off other characters but his sloppy monologues are unmemorable.
A wishy-washy Desdemona (Elizabeth Nabben) is feeble rather than fiery and defiant, reflecting her limp, loose clothes. The worst crime is Othello (Ray Chong Nee) who starts with awkward straight-backed stiffness and descends into silliness. His wildly flinching arms, darting eyes and near mouth-frothing as he enacts the end of days for himself and his love are meant to hold gravitas. Instead, they are laughable.
Evans took over the reigns from founder John Bell last year. Given that this is the second tragedy he has directed with less than stellar effects (Romeo and Juliet also had a lukewarm reception) raises the question: is the company still able to deliver?
That matters when Bell Shakespeare has become a crucial way to introduce young Australians to the Bard. Since it was founded in 1990, the company has performed for more than 2.5m people. Each year its work reaches 80,000 students.
It’s an important job. Yet the young are particularly susceptible to rejecting a playwright who needs considerable intellectual and emotional investment to reap rewards. No more so when faced with wearisome, oppressive, tedious productions. And who can blame them?
Bell Shakespeare is likely still adjusting after significant change (stability might be helped by the news in March that the company is receiving $1m in government funding to secure a permanent home.) It’s too early to throw in the baton just yet.
In 1991, the company’s debut production – another great tragedy, Hamlet – closed after just four shows because it was so abysmally bad. John Bell did not give up but went on to bring joy to millions. Let’s hope Evans, then, is just finding his feet and that Shakespeare will return to Australian stages as addictive, thrilling, traumatic and ravishing as it should be.
• Othello is showing at the Sydney Opera House playhouse in Sydney until 4 December
