Othello

Codpieces are a byword for the silliest side of Shakespeare. But something about the dark feminist energy of Ellen MacDougall’s brilliant ‘Othello’ robs these wobbly anachronisms of their comic power: the leather appendages dangling between its mens’ legs point their owners to disastrous, destructive ends.

MacDougall’s furiously smart production feels like an essay on toxic masculinity. Historically, the treacherous Iago is seen as a wheedling villain – effeminate and sly. Here, Sam Spruell plays him as a tough guy who uses ‘locker room talk’ to get Othello – his black commanding officer – exactly where he wants him. Next to him Othello (Kurt Egyiawan) is refined and statesmanlike, a man rugby-tackled into the muddy territory of sexual jealousy. And this emphasis on what being a man means is heightened by having Othello lieutenant Cassio played as a woman - Joanna Horton is bluff enough to pass muster, but still dangerously adrift in this carnival world of heavy drinking and sexist songs.

The text has been injected with modern-day shock power, twenty-first century slurs shoved into the soldiers’ banter. And the macho feel’s amped up even further by a set design that Gaston from ‘Beauty and the Beast’ might dream up on a tasteful day: blingy antlers and butch armour.

The female characters have little spaces carved out for them in this man’s world. The play’s soundtracked by a capella versions of pop songs (it’s not nearly as naff as that sounds) and Desdemona’s unofficial theme is Lana del Rey’s ‘Video Games’, full of the adolescent yearning and rebellion that made her leave her father for Othello. Natalie Klamar’s highly-strung Desdemona is matched by Thalissa Teixeira’s brilliant rendering of Iago’s wife Emilia’s final speech, where she breaks her silence to take down the men’s destruction. But the heartbreaking final tableau of four women’s bodies, dead, wounded, or rejected, acts as this play’s last word.