'Othello' - Play review

I was intending to watch those 4 'Othello' DVDs from the library all before I watched the show (I'm currently halfway through the third) but extenuating circumstances occurred, and I was fairly sure after watching the first one I knew the story anyway. I've seen Frantic Assembly once before, I saw their 'Beautiful Burnout' at the Nuffield 3 years ago for my drama GCSE and that just totally blew me away. Since then I started acting myself, and my director at the Nuffield Youth Theatre, Max Lindsay, is always saying how he got such and such an exercise from Frantic, or something drew an influence from them. At Hampshire Youth Theatre we even had a workshop with them for 'Great Expectations'.

So since starting acting myself and being involved in a lot of Frantic-inspired stuff I haven't actually seen a Frantic show, and what with me trying to watch as many Shakespeare films as possible before going to drama school, and what with the £5 tickets for Nuffield YT members, Frantic's 'Othello' was the perfect chance to see something awesome and personally significant.

And god daaaaaaaaaaaaamn that is how you do Shakespeare my friends, that is how you do Shakespeare.

If you want a bit of background if you haven't seen it already, it's been modernised to a bar/pub in northern England… On the Isle of Wight we'd call the society 'chavs', but I've got out of the habit of using that pathetic word thankfully. I just mean it's set in a violent, patriarchal hyper-sexualised microcosm (in which they all happen to wear nike hoodies, sweatpants and trainers) in which one's violence is what establishes and maintains one's status. These microcosms exist in contemporary society but it's perfectly possible to translate this story of violence, jealousy and revenge into one as they are separate from the values of the rest of society. And the translation is perfect: the words are all the same but the inflection and context give them different meaning - the 'Turks' are a rival gang coming to attack 'the Cypress', the pub in which the play is set, and Othello's 'lieutenant' is a trusted friend, etc., etc.


Our Othello in Frantic's production, Mark Ebulue was the breathing illustration of this beautiful translation, and I could fully believe that such an Othello could exist today because of the way he played it - brutally masculine, powerful and strong, the highest status in any room. At the same time, despite his incredible physique, he was capable of extreme tenderness, and the relationship between Othello and Desdemona was the sweetest that I have ever seen - when it was sweet that is. The slow descent into paranoia, jealousy and envy was superbly subtle in his conversations with Iago, and the final soliloquy about turning out the light of a human life and not being able to reignite it (literally my favourite Shakespeare soliloquy of all time, cleverly utilising a lighter in this adaptation) was heart wrenching.

This production also happened to feature the best Iago I've ever seen. Played by Steven Miller as a malicious little shit who evidently never left his Eminem phase, this is quite possibly the most evil character you'll find who isn't actually from hell. He really showed the disparity between the subtlety of Iago's actions and the razor-clean brutality of his thoughts - in his monologues, centre stage, spotlit and shrouded in dry ice, spouting hate and rage, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck raise, seriously I got goosebumps from how gloriously dark it was. He was physically intimidating on stage, always keeping his Roderigo in check and fantastically beating the shit out of anyone and everyone in the fight scenes.

The front rows were packed (this was a matinee as well), the walls moved and came apart, there was another room behind the ladies' door and the sign said 'karaoke night at the Cypress' - what an awesome reference.

My mum had with a taxi driver on her way to the show, in which he said he reckoned more people would like Shakespeare if people would only make it exciting, and a conversation with countless pretentious literature fanatics that it never should be. Well taxi driver, if only you could have seen this, and Shakespeare snobs, put this show in your pipe and smoke it, cause Frantic Assembly have what it takes. From as soon as I left the foyer and approached the theatre doors I could hear/feel the bass pounding on stage, and when I got to me seat beating music filled the space. The air was charged right from the start with electricity and energy, and as the lights went down that never dropped.

In the opening dance (well, physical theatre thingy) the cast flew about the stage, and without any words managed to establish that violent hyper-sexualised microcosm I mentioned earlier, without ever needing to explain that they were or why they were doing it. I was blown away in the first show of theirs I saw, but this was even more impressive. It never will cease to amaze me how many lifts and backflips and rolls these people can do without a serious injury. It's all very intricate stuff, and they can all do it almost without looking, the ensemble's muscle memory must be astounding if that's what it is. Physical work is all about committing to the right intention, and in all the fight scenes it looked like they were genuinely trying to kill each other with the violence they put into their whole bodies - when the lights went down at the end I was honestly expecting them to come up on a smashed skull - but expertly choreographed so we could think that without anyone getting actually mutilated.

It was fucking exciting, and that's what Shakespeare should be! I don't care if it's antiquated beautiful poetry, a lot of it is, that's not a reason to not make it exiting, far from it - it's also a horrendously destructive path of violence, jealousy and betrayal. There is no excuse for making a boring Shakespeare, and yet it happens all the time, and it's celebrated by the kind of book buffs who appreciate conservative line readings more than the epics that Shakespeare intended them to be. Yes there's a lot of emotion in there, but emotion isn't just words. Emotions are tense bodies and taut faces and occasionally a swung punch - as I said earlier, this is how you do Shakespeare right.

I realise I've been going on a lot about violence, there is of course another side to the tale of Othello. What would be Act 2 Scene 1 in the original play, in which Othello professes his deep love of Desdemona

'I cannot speak enough of this content.
It stops me here, it is too much of joy.'

 Is basically a sex scene. However, because of Frantic's close attention to the physical instead of just the words, it's so much more than that. It's a very delicate exploration of each other's body's almost dance like, showing an incredible relationship between the two actors. That was truly beautiful. The two films I've seen of Othello dismiss the actual love story and focus solely on the jealousy, ignoring the love as something which came and went before the events of the play almost as though Othello is only jealous because he feels his property is threatened. Having them in love first and then falling apart makes the ending even more harrowing, more true to the original form of a tragedy, in which something great takes a great fall - that being their love.

Emilia, played by Leila Crerar, was especially good in this production. For some reason, and I have absolutely no idea why, she was played as a bitch in the 1965 'Othello' I saw, which, I think, is more than a bit unfair as she isn't at fault at all. This production was much more sympathetic to Emilia, and she was superbly brave in the last scene, which was admirable.

I'm going to give this production whatever I gave Headlong's '1984', as they're both definitely in the same league - and that's a freaking 10/10. So, there's still some of the tour left, go and watch it.

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