English Touring Theatre, Oxford Playhouse and Shakespeare At The Tobacco Factory presented "Othello" at Oldham Coliseum. I have a slight vested interest in watching this play as I will be appearing in a version of it myself next year, so I was keen to see how it turned out, and this was a very slickly presented version.
Where required, actors got involved in bringing props on and off stage, thus obviating the need for a team of backstage crew. The acting area was a large platform on the actual stage floor and surrounded by a series of vertical fluorescent strip lights which, when turned on, were incredibly bright. When not in use, other lighting effects were used but, to be brutally honest, the stage was too dark at times, making it difficult to distinguish some of the actors as they came on until they spoke.
Othello was brilliantly portrayed by Victor Oshin. His physical stature was put to full use, particularly when he literally picks Desdemona up in a number of the scenes! Hard to comprehend that this play marks his professional debut. As the story pans out, Othello goes through a gamut of emotions until the tragic ending and his epileptic fit during a boxing fitness session was sensitively handled and realistic. His love and passion for his wife came across well, although oddly it wasn't echoed by his wife. This version was set in modern day and the clothing reflected that; however, the darkness of many of the outfits combined with the varying lighting levels didn't work well and I think it might have worked better to have employed more colour and use of jackets or jewellery to add contrast and help to establish status. Props were kept to a minimum but there were enough to allow the story to be understandable and I liked the trick employed to tidy up the table at the end of the party, very clever.
Desdemona (Kitty Archer) sadly delivered a lot of her lines like a bull in a china shop, especially early on, and so much of the pentameter and rich Shakespearian language was lost and hard to understand, especially if you didn't know the plot. Her best scenes all involved Emilia (Kelly Price). Price was excellent and her (mostly) Northern accent contrasted well with her mistresses' more refined tone. However, the two women had similar styles of hair and look and the way their scenes went, if you'd not known which actress was playing whom, you'd have been forgiven for mistaking Emilia for Desdemona and vice versa!
The only aspect which didn't work for me was Emilia's relationship with her husband, Iago (Paul McEwan), who is meant to be villainous and manipulative; however he came across this evening as bland giving a rather understated performance. The friend I was with and I both loved the rich Geordie accent of Roderigo (Brian Lonsdale); he was undoubtedly our favourite character and was convincingly portrayed. There were also strong and believable performances from Desdemona's father Brabantio (Christopher Bianchi) and Cassio (Philip Correia); good support came from Lodovico (John Sandeman) and the Duke (James Ellis) and I really enjoyed watching the sassy Bianca (Hayat Kamille), who owned the little time she had on stage. The actor playing Montano (Naby Dakhli) did OK but was let down by his heavy accent which was difficult to understand at times.
Two negative points I feel I ought to mention too sadly. First, there was an unnecessarily gratuitous amount of swearing in the very modern and definitely not Shakespearian drunken song performed by the soldiers at the end of a party. The expletives added nothing to the plot, other than to show how rowdy the soldiers, including Cassio, were getting as copious amounts of alcohol were consumed. Second, the sound effects and music employed were often simply too loud even in a decent sized auditorium like the Coliseum and the large silver microphone which was used like a tannoy was most odd and the levels set for the microphone meant some feedback was experienced by everyone present.
The Coliseum staff were helpful and welcoming and it is a very fine local theatre. This production of Othello runs every evening until October the 27th, starting at 7:30pm.
Reviewer David Swift
on - 23/10/18
photo credit - Helen Murray
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