Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously talked of Iago’s “motiveless malignity”, but director Gemma Bodinetz certainly gives Iago a reason for his jealousy of Othello and determination to bring the general down. This Othello – played with dignity and intelligence by Golda Rosheuvel – is a woman who not only has the temerity and skill to lead an army, but is an out lesbian who has wedded and bedded Desdemona.
Bodinetz’s contemporary production is brave and bold in every way. It’s played out on a mostly bare space that gives the actors nowhere to hide, and which at times works against the intimacy and claustrophobia that is integral to Shakespeare’s most domestic drama.
In changing the gender of Othello – making the character is a woman who has excelled in what is clearly very much a man’s world – the stakes are raised, and the evening speaks to present-day workplace politics. Iago is the “ancient” who feels resentment at a woman’s success, particularly as Othello and Desdemona are clearly so much in love.
Just before the murder, Emma Bispham’s Emilia tells Desdemona that men are made for eating women up “and when they are full, they belch us”, a comment on the illusionary power of a woman such as Othello in a deep-rooted patriarchy like that of the Venetian state. She is always just one step away from a fall. Iago brings her down with terrible ease. It reminds us how easily the advances made by women are lost.
From the Donmar’s all-female Shakespeare trilogy to the RSC’s gender-fluid Romeo and Juliet, productions of these familiar plays are putting gender and identity as much under the microscope as those of newly written plays.
That’s exciting, so it’s a pity that for all the intrigue here, and for the set-up’s juicy potential, Bodinetz doesn’t quite nail it. Part of the issue is technical. The space can be unforgiving (the first scene is so gabbled as to be almost unintelligible), and the murder in the bedroom and its fallout is rendered clumsy by the plonking of a room within a room – a large bed with billowing gauzy curtains – centre stage. The actors can only scuttle around the margins.
Not all the cast members are as comfortable speaking the text as Rosheuvel, and there can be a lack of distinctiveness in the performances. Marc Elliott is funny as the absurdly silly Roderigo, but Desdemona (Emily Hughes) lacks force and is so passive it feels as if she has exited long before she is murdered.
Patrick Brennan, a fine actor and a stalwart of last year’s Everyman ensemble, doesn’t quite rise to Iago, either. The motive for his behaviour may be abundantly clear, but he sets about destroying Othello with a disappointing lack of villainy. His very ordinariness may make it easier for him to spread false information and get the gullible to trust him, but this Iago is oddly bland.
- At Everyman, Liverpool, until 10 July. Box office: 0151-709 4776.
