TheatreguideLondon
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Othello
Donmar Theatre Winter 2007-2008

This is a first-rate production, with almost everything about it excellent.

The one thing it lacks, the one thing that keeps it from being really outstanding, is something that you may not even miss - tragic stature. We never really get the sense of a truly great figure being brought low, of larger-than-life passions at work, of something monumental and overpowering working its inevitable way out before us.

What we get is the moving story of an ordinary man being believably destroyed by the gratuitous malice of another, a story that generates pity if not awe. And, if you don't hold the play up to too high an ideal standard, that is a thoroughly satisfying evening's theatre.

It is also the opportunity for a skilled and sensitive director to draw powerful and compelling performances from his entire cast. And - oh yes - it's the opportunity to see two movie stars up close, which is the main reason this limited run sold out completely in the first six hours (but a West End transfer is inevitable).

The stars are Chiwetel Ejiofor as Othello and Ewan McGregor as Iago, with solid backing from Kelly Reilly's Desdemona, Tom Hiddleston's Cassio, Michelle Fairley's Emilia, Edward Bennett's Roderigo and the whole cast.

The director is Michael Grandage, who has clearly chosen to go for the life-sized human story, and who has guided his cast to create and sustain the emotional reality of that story.

If, as I said, Ejiofor never brings Othello to truly tragic stature, he does show us the man 'who loved not wisely but too well.' The one controlling fact of this Othello's life is his love for Desdemona, and when that is shaken he is driven through the rest of the play, not by rage, but by grief.

Those who look for operatic passions in their Othellos may be disappointed, but adjust your reference to a small man grieving for the one thing that gave his life meaning, and the picture Ejiofor paints is very realistic and very touching. (Just about the only weakness in his performance, ironically, is that he does occasionally reach for tragic, larger-than-life stature, and the only way he has of indicating that is by shouting.)

Ewan McGregor's Iago is equally recognisable - the cold sociopath familiar from so many films and TV crime shows. McGregor doesn't try to explain what one literary critic called Iago's 'motiveless malignity'. It's just a fact - accept that he hates the Moor, for whichever of the several reasons he gives, and he sees no moral issues or complications in his desire to destroy the enemy.

McGregor's Iago is a thinker, always watching, always thinking faster than anyone else, always able to grab an opportunity to advance his villainy.

Shakespearean critics have always seen the ironic foreboding in the first scene, when Desdemona's father warns Othello 'She has deceived her father, and may thee.' But this was the first time it registered with me that Iago heard that line as well, and without any obvious double-take McGregor lets us see the wheels begin to turn in Iago's head.

His performance is full of subtle touches like that, along with excellent and absolutely clear verse speaking

(Indeed, clarity is one of the dominant characteristics of this production, and something to applaud director Michael Grandage for. This is one of those rare Shakespearean productions that some audience members will leave convinced that the actors translated it all into 'real' English.)

Kelly Reilly solves the inherent problem within Desdemona - the fact that the woman strong and independent enough to break with her father and her culture becomes so passive at the end - by suggesting a cushioned princess, well able to dominate within her limited world, but simply out of her depth when things get ugly. She also brings to the play the one essential quality of any Desdemona, ethereal beauty.

Michelle Fairley's Emilia is strong, never more so than in her very courageous scene of standing up to Othello after the murder. Tom Hiddleston's Cassio has an attractive boyish innocence, Edward Bennett's Roderigo is comic without ever lapsing into cartoon, and the rest of the cast, most of them doubling as roles are combined, all serve the play admirably.

If you can get a ticket - the queue for returns starts hours before each performance, but usually a half-dozen manage to get in - or if it does transfer, go.

This may not be an Othello for the ages, but it is as fine an Othello as we could ask for right now.

Gerald Berkowitz

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Review - Othello - Donmar 2007