Theatre review: Othello (RSC / RST)

After a soft-launch of comparatively rare plays in generally fun productions, the Evans/Harvey era of the RSC gets its first big-ticket Shakespeare revival, and all I can say is I hope the opening six months are a more accurate sign of what's to come than Tim Carroll's interminable, dusty go at Othello. Judith Bowden's costumes put us squarely in the original setting of Renaissance Venice, enjoying a period of sustained military success in large part thanks to the black general Othello (John Douglas Thompson.) As such, when Turkey invades the Venetian colonies in Cyprus, he has to interrupt his honeymoon to lead the counter-attack, but he takes his new wife Desdemona (Juliet Rylance) with him, and they remain there for the handover of power. But unbeknownst to him Othello has an enemy in his most trusted lieutenant, Iago (Will Keen.)

Iago has been passed over for promotion, and also claims to have heard rumours that his wife Emilia (Anastasia Hille) has cheated on him with Othello, although there's no evidence that anyone else in the story has even heard such rumours, let alone that they might be true.

Whatever his motivations, Iago now hates his general and hatches a plot to ruin his happiness, and possibly his life, by convincing him that Desdemona's cheating on him with Cassio, the soldier who was promoted ahead of Iago. Although he gives a number of excuses to the audience along the way, Iago famously refuses to explain his motivations at the end, which is one of, but far from the only reason, that Othello is a play which gives a director a lot of options and alternatives. What's strangest about Carroll's production is that he doesn't explore any of them.

In fact to me this is barely a production, more like a copy of the playtext. I'm no fan of declamatory performances of Shakespeare's verse that focus more on rhythm than meaning, but that's what we get from every performance here - the cast even regularly move centre-stage if they have more than a few lines to say. As a result I don't think it's fair to even attempt to review the performances, which are clearly all following a specific model: At times you can see the actors, Keen especially, desperately attempting to inject any kind of personality into their characters.

But it's to little avail, and we're left with a production that does pretty much everything you can do to bore me: As the hefty running time suggests, this is a slow trudge through the lines, with every scene playing out in the exact same rhythm; not only monotonous, but robbing those emotional scenes that do benefit from a more considered pace of any power.

The period costumes serve no obvious thematic purpose other than, along with the speaking style, blocking of a load of men standing in every scene, and people walking in slo-mo until they get into the playing space delineated by a strip of lights, adding to the very old-fashioned feel of the production. So does the casting of actors who for the most part are at least 20 years older than the characters are usually cast; the conflict between Edward Hogg's Cassio and Jethro Skinner's Roderigo is one between virtually indistinguishable, awkward middle-aged men, and if you're going to go with the period setting then don't try to tell me an elderly Renaissance father is anything other than thrilled at his 45-year-old daughter finally marrying anyone. Again, it just feels like a throwback to Victorian star actors who'd keep playing Hamlet well into their sixties.

Baldly plonking the words onto the stage also means that there's no fixing any plot weaknesses, so there's zero indication that a battle had occurred (given the age of the cast there's equally no indication they're an army in the first place,) and the relationship between Cassio and Bianca (Madeleine Hyland) barely registers. But not having an opinion on how much race matters to the story is the most obvious problem. Othello's skin colour doesn't have to be the sole motivation for what happens to him in every production, but in the Year of Our Lord 2024 to have the more overtly racist lines slip past with no audience reaction - because they've been delivered exactly that same as every other line - is kind of shocking.

Maybe it's this production just ticking every box of what I don't want to see in Shakespeare performance, but I really can't see how this adds anything much to the experience of just reading the words on the page, without context or interpretation. A lot of the audience sounded very positive about it on the way out, but among the comments I overheard was "you do really have to pay close attention to understand what they're saying, though." Yes, yes you do, and that's not on you.

Othello by William Shakespeare is booking until the 23rd of November at The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Running time: 3 hours 10 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.