Othello

This 'Othello' leaps out and grabs you by the neck. Suba Das's propulsive, pruned production makes great virtue of the Rose theatre's semi-derelict state. The audience is perched on planks around the tiny playing space, a wooden semicircle buttressing a huge, echoing, puddle-strewn vault.

The cast wear fittingly rough-cut period costume, an artfully placed mirror solves a sightline problem perfectly and, thrillingly, the action spills out into the archeological site beside us.

Dan Jones's stupendous, 'Delicatessen'-style lighting ratchets up the tension, and the cast create an aura of paranoia worthy of 'Macbeth'. Nana Amoo-Gottfried is a whirlwind of fury as Othello, bearing down on Ruth Picket's bewildered, trapped Desdemona. Conjuring the storm is Cary Crankson's increasingly assured Iago, played as a maleficent, nastily sexed, streetwise Puck. And Richard Kiess delivers a faultless comic performance as the foppish Roderigo.

It's a huge shame that, in his quest to streamline the play, Das leaves out far too much of Cassio, including one crucial scene - Othello's witnessing of the handkerchief in Cassio's hand.

And at such close range, the jealous raging could use some modulation. But this is a bold, brilliant achievement: a compulsive 'Othello' of nightmarish conviction.