Log in to My Time Out for your personalised guide to what's on in London. It's fast, easy and FREE!
Time Out's guide to the best events, films, gigs and festivals happening in London in 2012.
Find gyms in north, south, east, west and central london with this definitive guide to London gyms.
Read which songs about London made Time Out's definitive list.
© Nobby Clark
Barrie Rutter's indifferent Northern Broadsides production, which transfers to London from West Yorkshire Playhouse, really offers only one attraction: the opportunity to see whether comic Lenny Henry can successfully play it straight in his first attempt at Shakespeare. Henry's performance is thankfully no embarrassment. But it's no revelation, either. His thickset, towering physical stature makes some impact, and he speaks, in a voice of dark velvet, with clarity. Yet there's a mechanical quality to both his delivery and his movement that suggests studied competence rather than emotional inhabitance of the role. He shows us an approximation of Othello's rage, but far too little of his pain.
More eye-catching is Conrad Nelson's Iago, a nasty, sharp-featured, weaselly creature whose machinations are at last exposed at the play's tragic conclusion as he sits sniggering among the corpses. There's nothing subtle about this spitting, psychopathic portrayal, but it does at least relieve the workaday ordinariness of Rutter's staging, given a drab, vaguely nineteenth-century setting by Ruari Murchison. Solid, but decidedly unexciting.
Follow Trafalgar Studios to receive updates on new events happening here.
What is 'following'?A kitsch-free rebel on the outskirts of theatreland, Trafalgar Studios is a modern, minimalist space in the shell of the former Whitehall Theatre....
Read full venue reviewTransport Charing Cross
020 7492 1561
We found the performances wooden and the vocal delivery lacking any sensitivity. The actors shouted and rushed their lines. How much more threatening it would have been if lines had been quietly spoken. Iago never stayed still. He needs to realise that less is more.
Saw the press performance last night, absolutely outstanding. Cannot overstate how impressed I was with this performance, I am a convert Mr Henry. Well done Northern Broadsides, well done cast, well done Traf. studios.
Share your thoughts