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Despite lucid central performances from the starry trio of David Harewood, Toby Jones and Caitlin FitzGerald, this Othello feels strangely old fashioned. What we have here is stately West End Shakespeare, well-spoken and measured, directed by Tom Morris and designed by Ti Green in a way that feels curiously adrift from the modern world. The production could have happened in the 1990s, the 1970s, probably the 1950s: even PJ Harvey’s bizarre and sporadic score seems quaint.
The deployment of a prestige cast in a classic – once again a speciality at the Haymarket under the ownership of Access Entertainment – is of course calculated to trigger multiple synaptic associations in a contemporary audience but also harks back to an earlier era. Harewood is an actor of immense charisma and meticulous depth. Astonishingly the first black man to play Othello at the National Theatre in 1997, he returns to the role “declined into the vale of years” at a vital and imposing 59.
He brings to it a new gravitas and initially, the lucky-me geniality of someone lately fortunate in love: he and Fitzgerald’s comparably grown-up and physically striking Desdemona convincingly adore one another. Harewood also carries the ballast of three decades of magisterial stage roles, from William F Buckley to Lord Azriel, and the TV burnish of Homeland and Supergirl.
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His frank and admirable documentary explorations of mental health and colonial history also arguably inform a character who is deranged in part by the racism of the society around him. Here, Othello is not the only black face in Venice, which makes the casual bandying of offensive slurs more insidious.
Toby Jones’s Iago is married to a black woman: Vinette Robinsons’ Emilia, impressive in her early muted submission and in the later depths of her anguish. But racial hatred combines with thwarted ambition and a seething sexual disgust in his desire to destroy Othello. Jones is the great everyman character actor of our generation. As he has pointed out, some think he always plays villains, some that he always plays saints, like the hero of the Post Office scandal Mr Bates – so his layered, loathsome, inveigling Iago carries both shock value and cosy familiarity.
All three bring pedigree and name-recognition to the project (Fitzgerald, who uses her own American accent, was in Inventing Anna, Masters of Sex and briefly in Succession). Bar a few stumbles on opening night they speak Shakespeare’s words with fluency and precision, with many familiar lines ringing fresh. Iago’s festering hatred, Othello’s disfiguring jealousy and Desdemona’s growing despair are powerfully felt. Why then does the whole thing feel so humdrum and inert?
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There’s a lack of dynamism and propulsion to the direction. There’s also an uncertainty of tone: the endless assertions of Iago’s honesty come across as absurd rather than ironic. Multiple scenarios provoke titters rather than horror, including Iago’s invented account of Cassio (an unremarkable Luke Treadaway) sleepily snogging him in bed while dreaming of Desdemona, and Desdemona’s cry of “kill me tomorrow” on the point of her death.
There’s a lot of laborious signposting. Green’s set of heavy doorways and a cutout ceiling is raised and jiggled about to suggest a ship in a storm, then replaced with mesh screens on which travelogue scene changes – and later, the enormous, smiling faces of Othello and Desdemona – are projected. Harvey’s drivelly music seeps in to suggest a change of location or mood, then evaporates again. Solemn clangs and spotlights underscore moments of gravity.
Elsewhere, there’s a sense of slapdash carelessness. A life-threatening leg wound only gives Cassio a slightly ouch-y limp. For no apparent reason Tom Byrne’s Roderigo disguises himself as a junior chef with a silly elasticised beard.
It’s still good to see, and especially to hear, Harewood, Jones and FitzGerald unfold Shakespeare’s horrible tale on this historic stage. But as star vehicles go this is a ponderous one.
To Jan 17, othelloonstage.com.
