Theatre review: Othello (Shakespeare's Globe)

For the final major Shakespeare production of Michelle Terry’s first summer season the last actor to serve as Artistic Director of the Globe returns, with a characteristically idiosyncratic take on a classic villain. Director/composer Claire van Kampen has said she wanted her production of Othello to return the play’s focus to its title character; I’m not entirely sure how she thought she’d manage that with her husband, noted scenivore Mark Rylance, as Super Mario Iago. Venetian Ensign Super Mario Iago has a rather vague grudge against his general, Othello (André Holland) and, aided by Roderigo (Steffan Donnelly,) a man with more money than sense and a crush on Othello’s wife, hatches a convoluted plot not to destroy the general, but to make him destroy himself. Central to his scheming is Othello’s new wife Desdemona (Jessica Warbeck,) a younger woman whose father objected to her marrying a black man, no matter how well-regarded a soldier he might be.

Theatre review: Doctor Scroggy's War

In among the patchy track record of new writing at Shakespeare's Globe, there's a few writers who get it just right. Howard Brenton has a better hit rate than most, returning for a third premiere at the venue after the huge success of his Anne Boleyn. The bloody theme of this summer's season is inspired by the centenary of World War I, and Brenton's Doctor Scroggy's War is the only play to deal with it directly. It follows Jack Twigg (Will Featherstone,) a London lad who's the first of his family to go to Oxford, where he makes aristocratic friends like Lord Ralph Dulwich (Joe Jameson.) The two become officers together, but Jack's knowledge of military history and tactical mind see him quickly promoted above his upper-class friend; although what seems like him having ideas above him station gets him into trouble with Field-Marshall French (Paul Rider.)