Othello
Reframing ‘Othello’ as a police procedural in which Shakespeare’s Moorish general is a high-ranking officer at the Met is an inspired notion from director Ola Ince. It injects a note of campy, thrillery fun into what tends to be a rather dour play. And the Met’s dismal record on race feels like the perfect way to dig into the themes of the tragedy. For half an hour or so it zips by: there’s a neat montage scene at the start in which we’re quickly introduced to Ken Nwosu’s Othello and Poppy Gilbert as his wife, Desdemona. I wasn’t entirely sure about the heavy modification of Shakespeare’s dialogue to add in contemporary policing references – ‘intel’ this and ‘guvnor’ that seemed to be trying too hard when it was never going to fully fit anyway – but there’s something deliciously ballsy about the attempt. Unfortunately, it soon gets hopelessly tangled up in itself, in large part because Ince throws a second elaborate conceit into the mix: Othello’s subconscious is a character, played by Ira Mandela Siobhan. He paces, twitches and spins around – an indication of the outwardly calm Othello’s interior anguish, as his treacherous BFF Iago (Ralph Davis) slowly poisons him against Desdemona. I’m not saying this is a terrible idea per se. But in the context of a production already preoccupied with homaging cop dramas? It’s a terrible idea. The two big concepts keep tripping over each other: certainly neither makes the other any clearer, and the police stuff gradually falls by the w