Frantic Assembly's Othello
Lyric Hammersmith Theatre | Seen February 10, 2023
Frantic Assembly has created two pieces of theatre I consider to be formative to my aesthetics as a theatre maker; Things I Know to be True and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime rank amongst the most powerful productions I’ve ever seen both in terms of the content and production of the pieces, but also in how influential they were to me personally. Frantic’s Othello, also directed by Scott Graham and up for its third run after runs in 2008 and 2014, was something I knew I could not miss during my time in London. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to the other two. It was good, but it wasn’t life-changing as their work so often is.
Set in a 21st century bar complete with an arcade game and centrally, a pool table, this adaptation of Othello did have its moments of being visually exciting. The walls of the space were able to move like snake, creating interesting world-warping moments, and the walls could also disappear to reveal the dumpster outside the bar, where the cast performed impressively well-choreographed fight sequences. Standout performances came from Joe Layton, whose windbreaker-and-Nike-trainers Iago was a little too un-hateable and therefore perfectly recognizable as our 21st century white “nice guy",” and from Kirsty Stuart as Emilia, who’s speech in Act 4 Scene 3 served as the 11 o’clock number that revved me back up for the big finale. And that big finale did go out with a bang, which in this case, was an incredible amount of fake blood and some confusingly realistic moments of stage violence. By the end of the play, I was leaning forward in my seat with my heart pounding, but I do wish I had been that way throughout. There were interesting images that would really grasp my attention from time to time, such as the strangling of Desdemona, which was done on top of the pool table with Othello holding her above him rather than the typical staging with her underneath, but it was also easy to stop paying attention to the longer more text-heavy scenes.
To its credit, I think that it’s really easy for theatre companies to hit the nail a little too hard on the head with staging Othello as a 21st century race play. This production does not do that. In my opinion, it’s much more interesting and possibly more “progressive” to address more of the subconscious nuances of the text in a modern context than to do an overt “This play is racist!” take on the original text, because well, of course it is. As a 21st century audience member, I don’t need you to explain to me a) how Othello is racist or b) that racism still exists and that’s why this play is relevant. Sorry if this is a hot take, but I think that’s low hanging fruit, and Frantic Assembly did dig deeper than that. (Plus, if you’re choosing a Shakespeare as your piece to flaunt your liberalism and confront modern racism, what are you really advancing? Anyway, let me get off that soapbox and back to the review.) By setting it in a sort of Uber-pedestrian setting, but one with it’s own unique and distinct social code and order, Frantic Assembly’s Othello succeeds in confronting the relationship between the personal and the political, which I believe is closer to what this play is actually about, rather than using the text as pure political messaging.
It isn’t the best thing I’ve seen in London so far, but what I will say, is that it lead my friends and I to have some legitimate conversations about Shakespeare, the role of adaptations and revivals of pieces like Othello in today’s theatre scene, and the ethical responsibilities of theatre, or if there even are any. Maybe they wanted us to leave with some bigger questions about race, gender, violence and humanity, which aren’t the questions I left with, but I can’t say I didn’t leave the theatre thinking, and that is what I always hope for.