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Othello, Warwick Arts Centre, 31/01/09

This production was so keen to emphasise the racism of the play that, in some places, it lost sight of the rest of the text. Director Kathryn Hunter was sitting in front of me scribbling away for the whole performance, so perhaps it will pick up – I hope it just had teething problems. It certainly had problems.
Patrice Naiambana’s (Othello) accent was all over the place, the ensemble work was sloppy, and it was self-indulgently long despite some hefty cuts. Emilia’s wonderful speech denouncing men was cut so short that it lost all of its power, an odd decision given that Desdemona was not a fragile, subservient little thing. In fact, Natalia Tena in her RSC debut was fantastic, and held her own on a big, spare set despite her frail physique.

I liked the set, with its two movable arches that came together and moved apart to become a Venetian bridge, a balcony, barracks, ships. Although the manoeuvring could have done with more rehearsal as the stage hands were a distraction, it was visually very effective. Less effective were the smaller props, screens used to make walls, waves, doorways, which were reminiscent of an A-level drama production. The murder scene, and the billowing sheets and dream-sequence, also belonged in an school production rather than being worthy of the RSC. What could have been a very powerful image, the small figure of Desdemona in a sea of white sheets, was made rather silly by the decision to have the sheets billow and ripple.

Musically, the show was excellent, with a lovely mix of styles performed live on stage by a wonderful group of musicians. The mix of very specifically African music with English was interesting, and made the point about racial difference far more effectively than any of the more blatant, visual ideas. The soldiers’ barracks on Cyprus hosts a black-and-white minstrels type cabaret, complete with golliwog and grotesque white doll used to represent Desdemona. However, the obvious respect that the soldiers have for their commander was at odds with the blatant disrespect shown to him in private, and Hunter did not explore this duplicity further. This brought the idea of race right to the forefront of the drama, and then rather than run with, Hunter just abandoned it, so that it obscured rather than revealing.

Michael Gould’s Iago has been praised elsewhere, but I thought him pantomimic. The way he leered and plotted, it was unbelievable that Othello and others could continue to call him “honest Iago”. For the deceit to work, the actor must convey two sides to the character’s personality, and it should have been clear to everyone that Iago was hell-bent on destroying Othello. That said, Naiambana’s Othello was strong on nobility and militarism, weak on emotion. While his love for Desdemona was well portrayed, the character was flat, and his fit was almost comically bad. Marcello Magni’s Roderigo was foolish and petulant, and although he hammed it up rather too much for my taste, he got a lot of laughs, and provided a nice contrast to Gould’s alternately dour and camp Iago.

For such a fine actor, Hunter has made some odd decisions and failed to bring the best out of her performers. Bring on Lenny Henry in April.

Performed by Shared Experience.

Adapted by Helen Edmondson.

Directed by Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale.

Seven hours is a long time to sit in the theatre, albeit with a supper-hour in the middle, but the numbness in my nether regions was forgotten as Shared Experience took the audience on a superlative journey through peace, war, doubtful peace, more war, tentative peace, devastating war and finally some possible redemption. The fact that this production was fantastic is not to say that the experience was not gruelling. The first part of the play ended with Barnaby Kay’s nihilistic Pierre Bezuhov intoning “Death. And.  Nothingness”, with all the finality and hopelessness of a funeral knell. Charming. 

Time for a restorative sandwich to revive the flagging spirits and stave off impending depression. It would be an unwise move, at least financially speaking, to drive an entire audience to suicidal despair in the first half, but there were so many stunningly beautiful and resonant moments (as well a cliff-hanger ending) that there was no doubt that people were going to come back for more. 

The tawdry, tired gold of the set was evocative of an age gone by and of ruined splendour, an important theme of the play. The Russian aristocracy running through the blazing streets of Moscow to escape Napoleon’s army squabble over what to sacrifice and what to save. The shimmering mirrors and gold  – mostly life-size picture frames used to create everything from doors and windows to opera boxes – captured the casual decadence of the shallower characters, and gave the young, rebellious characters a physical representation of wealth to reject. The set was opulent enough to make the rich costumes and jewels seem fitting in the party scenes, but was also faded enough to perfectly capture the slightly run-down museum atmosphere of the opening scene.

Despite this visual decadence, the set and props were actually quite minimal while the costumes were gorgeously over the top. Cutlery featured heavily, often making the distinction between dancing and fighting unclear – a clever way of illustrating the vicious nature of much of the aristocracy’s repartee. The actual battlegrounds were created with flags, boxes, and lots of screaming and shouting, enhanced by frighteningly loud gunshots. The ensemble movement work in the battle scenes was spectacular, and the use of slow motion avoided bad-film territory and was shockingly moving. With a fairly small cast and such a long, intimate time on stage, watching the various bright young things we had seen dance, fall in love, sing, drink, boast and fight topple to the ground in agonizing slow motion to twitch and lie still was excellently done – tragic without over-egging the pudding-of-death. 

The cast were unanimously good, particularly those who had the difficult task of charting the younger generation’s journey from pampered innocence to bitter experience. Playing a child is always difficult, but Louise Ford’s Natasha grew on stage from a romantically deluded, spoiled teenager into a calm, sad woman, via a hysterical failed elopement and a love-affaire tragically cut short by the war. The spectre of war touches all of the characters in the play – the clue is in the name! – and Helen Edmondson’s adaptation does not pull any punches when dealing with death and destruction. Homes, families, lives and loves are shattered by war, and Meckler and Teale’s direction excellently counterpoints the young mens’ intense desire to fight for their country with their female relatives’ fear and grief. Particularly of note was Marion Bailey as Countess Rostova, almost physically destroyed with fear for her oldest son and later grief for her younger. Her husband, Geoffrey Beevers’ brilliantly affable Count Rostov, was often the comic relief within the Rostov family’s many trials and tribulations, but his devotion to his family and deep love for his wife and children kept him from becoming a figure of fun. The other patriarch in the play, Prince Balkonsky, played by the excellent Jeffery Kissoon, is a different matter. Frail, feisty and domineering, he bullies and blusters his way through the play, never failing to be compelling, and, at his demise, heart-rending. He had a good limp, too.

His long-suffering daughter, Princess Maria (Kate Wimpenny) channels her suffering into her religion, and her frail hope of one day escaping the tyranny of the father she desperately loves and finding love for herself is delicately and sensitively portrayed. Her wayward brother, Prince Andrei (David Sturzaker), was quite taciturn, meaning that Sturzaker’s eyebrows did a lot of the acting – but never have eyebrows been more eloquent.

The old show-biz adage of ‘always leave them wanting more’ will generally not apply to 7-hour shows, but with a constant energy and a plot that rolled on like a fatal boulder down a hill, Shared Experience’s War and Peace did. Not that I left unsatisfied, but I could have watched more – although I think a cushion would have been necessary! After being put through the emotional wringer for so long, this reviewer was so involved in the emotional lives of these people that the thought of them suffering any more was almost unbearable, and the ambiguity of the ending was therefore slightly frustrating. However, one cannot argue with Tolstoy – and this production of his great work was truly Epic.