There is nothing polite about Frantic Assembly’s Othello. No prettified classic, it is vulgar, tough and fractious. We are in a modern-day gangland where tensions rise over the pool table and fights break out by the bins. To survive, you need to be quick, brutal and unforgiving.
That is why Michael Akinsulire makes such an unnerving lead. In a production revived after outings in 2008 and 2014, he is not a mild-mannered victim of racial injustice – although injustice it is – but an alpha-male pack leader, formidable and muscular, who is wounded by Iago with a psychological blow more penetrating than any knife attack. Hurt and imbalanced, he is made dangerous.
Once Joe Layton’s peak-capped Iago plants a seed of doubt, Akinsulire stumbles from a place of relaxed authority, the assured partner of Chanel Waddock’s streetwise Desdemona in her running shorts and top knot, to a flailing has-been, vulnerable and out of control. In Scott Graham’s punchy production, he is immersed in violence from the start; the suggestion of Desdemona’s infidelity only plunges him deeper. His behaviour is cruel, yet understandable.
“Men are men,” says Iago to account for a brawl behind the pub where these outsiders deal drugs, vie for authority and shag in the toilets. In this macho world, they adhere to a strict pecking order, each man conscious of his status, each woman wise to the position her man affords her. Iago’s subterfuge does not simply undermine the gang leader, it rips apart the whole delicate structure.
All this brings out the primal passions in Shakespeare’s play. It is about sex and violence, both of which take place on the pool table that sits at the centre of Laura Hopkins’s cleverly adaptable set. These characters are young and impulsive, driven by their urges, be it lust, jealousy or the need for respect. Speaking in their own accents, they are fuelled by delinquent energy.
That energy is matched by the vigorous dance soundtrack by Gareth Fry and Hybrid, the brash and broody lighting by Natasha Chivers and Andy Purves, and this company’s signature physical-theatre interjections. Snappy and conversational in the adaptation by Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, it is urgent, abrasive and thrilling.
At Curve, Leicester, until 1 October. On tour until 11 February.
