This time last year, Andrew Hilton's unsubsidised company, Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, faced closure. Supporters raised £30,000 to guarantee its survival, and Hilton's tenacious team is now back with more Shakespeare, again without public funding, in this charismatic venue.
Such a recent reminder of the company's perilous existence makes Hilton's production of Othello all the more precious. There is seemingly no problem this year with ticket sales - long queues formed for the unreserved, seating over the weekend - and the audience was transfixed during three hours of Shakespeare pared down to the bare bones of thrilling language.
Played in the round and with admirably simple staging, Hilton's version builds slowly and carefully to its terrible denouement. There is very little in the way of embellishment or stage trickery: the set is limited to a stone floor, a dining table and Othello's marital bed. Such an uncluttered approach is not only cost-effective, it also clears the way, quite literally, for some superb performances.
Chris Donnelly's Iago is the most restrained and unshowy I've encountered, and this makes the seeping of his poison into Othello's mind all the more compelling and credible. As Desdemona, Saskia Portway is utterly convincing as a bright, besotted new wife and a woman wronged in a man's world, perched alone at the edge of a room while the men talk war.
Leo Wringer's Othello, a commanding performance from the start, begins with a warm, quiet dignity which he loses as he becomes Iago's hopeless plaything. His transition, the thing that any production of Othello must render real to its audience, is made absolutely plausible here and, in the final scene centred on that marital bed, still shocking to behold.
· Until March 17. Box office: 0117 902 0344.
