Othello (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon)
Verdict: Moor is less
You don’t need to be all woke to find Shakespeare’s Othello uncomfortable to watch. After all, this is a play that climaxes in what can only be described as an honour killing — when the titular hero murders his adoring young bride, Desdemona.
Even if Othello has been tricked into jealousy, it’s hard to accept his claim that he’s acting nobly.
Weirdly, it’s as if Tim Carroll’s new production for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford is trying to play down this disturbing fact.
Starring John Douglas Thompson as the titular General, with Juliet Rylance as Desdemona and Will Keen as the scheming squaddie Iago who deceives Othello, Carroll turns the play into a lofty, ceremonial dirge.
Starring John Douglas Thompson as the titular General (above). Even if Othello has been tricked into jealousy, it’s hard to accept his claim that he’s acting nobly
The brutality is kept at arm’s length by presenting it in what the programme calls a ‘mindscape’
The brutality is kept at arm’s length by presenting it in what the programme calls a ‘mindscape’.
By this, I think we are to understand that we are in a sort of dream state. There is no denying the production has a semi- ethereal atmosphere, thanks to breathy chanting, beautifully tailored costumes evoking 16th-century Venice, and not a stick of furniture.
And yet, however tasteful and elegant Judith Bowden’s design makes the play look, and however much Carroll’s production emphasises its nervy, dark interiority, the bitter, misogynistic kernel won’t go away.
Thompson brings a great dignity to the Moor of Venice, a role he first played on Broadway in 2009, again with Rylance as Desdemona. This Othello is a 60-year-old bus-pass soldier with a John Wayne gait, as if the shape of his battle-charger still lingered between his legs.
Far from physically frightening, his rages are muttered and restrained. He seems hollowed out by jealousy, not driven to madness. In this 1,000-seat auditorium, he needs more wattage.
There is no denying the production has a semi- ethereal atmosphere, thanks to breathy chanting, beautifully tailored costumes evoking 16th-century Venice, and not a stick of furniture
And yet, however tasteful and elegant Judith Bowden’s design makes the play look, and however much Carroll’s production emphasises its nervy, dark interiority, the bitter, misogynistic kernel won’t go away
Rylance’s 45- year-old Desdemona continues Carroll’s oddly middle-aged casting. She has luminous looks, but is far from a blushing innocent who can’t believe some men mean women harm.
But the most curious and inscrutable turn is 54-year-old Keen as Othello’s twisted but trusted ensign Iago, who leads his boss into a vengeful frenzy… just for the hell of it.
A studiedly cold fish, it’s not clear how much Keen’s Iago really enjoys his malevolence. Sometimes it’s as if he’s talking to himself, and he slows his mischief to a near halt. His energy, like that of the overall production, is impassive, inward and cerebral.
Also typical of the production, his diction is precise, considered and lucid. Yet this only draws a veil around the maelstrom of lust, rage and brutal domestic violence that makes and mars this play.
A Raisin In The Sun (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith and touring)
Verdict: Bittersweet Raisin
Who, by contrast, can fail to be moved by Lorraine Hansberry’s great cry for equal rights in 1940s Chicago, A Raisin In The Sun?In 1959 she was the first black woman to have a play on Broadway, with this semi-autobiographical account of her family’s struggle against racism when they moved into an all-white neighbourhood.
Hansberry’s fictional family is headed by formidable god-fearing grandmother Lena (Doreene Blackstock), who has escaped the violent aftermath of slavery in the South.
Following the death of her labourer husband, she is to receive $10,000 — a sum that presents life-changing opportunities for them all.
Theatre production A Raisin in the Sun at The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre
Theatre production A Raisin in the Sun at The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre
Frustrated chauffeur son Walter (Solomon Israel) wants to open a liquor store. His wife Ruth (Cash Holland) sees the money as her chance to escape their cockroach-infested home. And Walter’s activist sister Beneatha (Joséphine-Fransilja Brookman) wants to study medicine at college.
Tinuke Craig’s production deftly mobilises their aspirations and taps movingly into the play’s emotional vena cava when a white man from the new neighbourhood tries to stop them moving in.
Craig could be more rigorous in her presentation of domestic details, and I wish she’d taken Beneatha’s youthful energy more seriously (instead of letting her seem a flighty dilettante).
Theatre production A Raisin in the Sun at The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre
But Cecile Trémolières’ stage design constructs the home out of see-through gauze and not only creates the ghostly sense of a bygone era, but also subtly suggests the possibility of transformation.
All of which makes it impossible for the heart not to swell as the family struggle to assert their political, economic and human rights.
[Othello runs until November 23. A Raisin In The Sun is at the Lyric until November 2 then at the Nottingham Playhouse from November 5-16.]
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (Marylebone Theatre, London)
Verdict: Race drama hits home
This isn’t the story of Anne Frank, hidden in 1942 Amsterdam, murdered in the Holocaust, immortalised in her teenage diary.
She haunts it, but this dense, talkative, witty, engrossing play shows two Jewish couples now, a world apart in every way.
Phil and Debbie are affluent and secular in Florida; Yerucham and Shoshana (they changed their names to become ultra-Orthodox) live in Jerusalem and are visiting his father, a Holocaust survivor. The wives were college friends, but Phil is wary of the patriarchal Yerucham.
A series of scenes — awkward, touching, hilarious, shocking or furious — reveal differences over family, marriage, morality, God, politics, and ten centuries of Middle East history.
Theatre production What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank – Marylebone Theatre
Theatre production What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank – Marylebone Theatre
Joshua Malina’s Phil is irritated by the strict rule of not touching Shoshana (Dorothea Myer-Bennett), and shamedly attracted by the massive wig she wears for religious reasons. Debbie (Caroline Catz) hates Phil’s furious secular remarks and is upset by Yerucham (Simon Yadoo) being willing to make Holocaust jokes because God will solve everything.
There is silent, shocked fury when it is suddenly clear the Israeli couple think the Americans aren’t proper Jews.
Challenging them all is Debbie and Phil’s son Trevor — Gabriel Howell, announcing each scene with a scornful teenage eye-roll and rounding off the first half with a demolition of the comfy materialism of his parents and the ‘ten thousand wasted years’ of religion and ritual of the Israelis.
Theatre production What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank – Marylebone Theatre
Director Patrick Marber adapted the original book with its author Nathan Englander, updating it to allow savage rows about the present conflict.
I was afraid it would falter in the second half when they try to mellow with cannabis, but it builds back to rage and an oddly beautiful ‘Anne Frank Game’: asking who would or wouldn’t save the others.
We gentiles would probably never conceive such a savage game, but it digs so deep into universal feelings that in any age, race and faith it would hit home.
The Flea (The Yard Theatre, Hackney Wick)
Verdict: Hot historical gossip
The Yard in Hackney is a micro-theatre that’s been punching above its weight since 2011.
The Flea marks the return of a fascinating piece of historical gossip about a homosexual brothel, or ‘Molly house’, in Victorian London that triggered the real-life Cleveland Street scandal of 1889.
Patrons were said to have included Prince Albert Victor, eldest son of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII.
The story’s been hungrily seized upon by writer James Fritz as a semi-Dickensian yarn about a poverty-stricken youth, Charlie, who goes to work in Cleveland Street so he can provide for his bereaved mother.
The Flea marks the return of a fascinating piece of historical gossip about a homosexual brothel
The play is a cheerful historical travesty and good theatrical fun
He soon comes under investigation from Inspector Frederick Abberline – the real-life plod with a point to prove having failed to arrest Jack the Ripper. His probe leads him to the summit of Victorian society – only to meet an institutional cover-up.
Thanks to Naomi Kuyck-Cohen’s doll’s house set, director Jay Miller’s production is reminiscent of the caricatured paintings of German expressionist painter George Grosz.
Miniature and repurposed furniture includes a filing cabinet that is a staircase, stools on precipitous stilts and purple carpeted walls.
Deliberately anachronistic costumes are modified to fit with ‘queer aesthetics’ (frilly arms on policeman’s serge suits, etc.) in a way that seems designed to reclaim and ‘own’ the story as one for the modern world.
The story’s been hungrily seized upon by writer James Fritz as a semi-Dickensian yarn about a poverty-stricken youth, Charlie, who goes to work in Cleveland Street so he can provide for his bereaved mother
Although some of the acting lacks sophistication, its naivety is also its charm – in particular Tomas Azocar-Nevin’s turn as a Rowan Atkinson-ish young Charlie.
But the high point is a bonkers powwow in the second half between an alarmed Queen Victoria (Breffni Holahan) and Almighty God (Will Bliss) – who assures her that if she does the right thing she will be remembered in posterity by some of the nation’s finest actors in The Crown on TV.
The result is cheerful historical travesty and good theatrical fun.
