This horseshoe-shaped, Victorian theatre is a neglected treasure. Under its current director, Rupert Goold, it is also pursuing an adventurous policy. Following Beckett, Pinter and Stoppard, it now offers a second world war Othello starring Ron Cephas Jones, who made a big impact as a bible-punching serial killer in Jesus Hopped the A Train.
Goold's idea of setting Shakespeare's tragedy in the war raises a logical problem: although black American GIs were unsung heroes, they did not become generals summoned at dead of night to cabinet war-rooms. The dazzling verismo of Laura Hopkins's settings - with Othello first seen emerging from a jazz-dive called the Aleppo - also sometimes leads the actors to treat the language as if it were naturalistic film noir dialogue.
What the production does have is enormous vitality and an intriguing Freudian undertow. Cephas Jones is a fine Othello: lean, lovestruck and doubly conscious of his isolation as a black American in the British army. He only needs to highlight more the tussle between punishment and pity in his killing of Desdemona. But the significant idea - though one used by Olivier as long ago as 1938 - is the suggestion that Iago, played by Finbar Lynch with dangerous intensity, is driven by a thwarted passion for his boss. Lynch gazes lovingly into Othello's eyes on "I am your own for ever" and looks set to rape him after he falls into an epileptic fit. Given Iago's pervasive misogyny - underscored here by his stabbing of Bianca - it makes a kind of sense.
Once you've swallowed the unlikely premise of a black 1940s general, the production works well. Hopkins's design for Cyprus, an enfolding set of De Chirico-like colonnades, is outstanding. Kate Fleetwood's Desdemona combines spirit with fidelity as shown by her abrupt dismissal of Teresa Banham's worldly Emilia. And Jamie Bower, in long khaki shorts straight out of It Aint 'Alf Hot Mum, turns Roderigo into an amusing dupe. The real pleasure, however, lies in discovering that Shakespeare is alive and well outside the nationals and the larger reps.
· Until November 1. Box office: 01604 624811.
