“flicking on the hidden dark ember of the heart”
Othello seems always be a play about intersectionality and entangled gender-racial power-dynamics. The tension between racialised othering and patriarchal control illustrates nuanced, multi-layered social hierarchies that turbulently operates upon and intersects against each other. This seems has to become the standardised approach to deal with this play, such as Nicholas Hytner’s 2013 reimagination that situates the tragedy within a contemporary military bureaucracy, where institutional power colludes in producing both intimacy and violence. Alternatively, you may seek authenticity in Elizabethan theatre like what the Globe does in 2018 with Mark Rylance and André Holland which desperately seeks for humour.
However, if we temporarily suspend all that (post)colonial discourse and theatrical authenticity for a little while, what lays bare is a Shakespeare being absolutely modern. He intuitively knows human psychology well even before this discipline was invented. Iago (Toby Jones) is a villain not just for the handkerchief-plotting. He is more a master of understanding and manipulating human’s heart. He doesn’t enforce anything on any of them, Othello’s anxiety and jealousy, Cassio’s toxic attachment to honour, and Roderigo’s desperate desire… he just flicks a tiny spark fire inside of them, letting it burned into boundless, consuming blaze that eventually devours everyone in the name of love. In that sense, you may even say Iago is Shakespeare’s alter ego: they know humanity, its dark side as well as its fragility.
However, this will only work through a brilliant cast. David Harewood’s Othello begins as a commander with authority and self-discipline who gradually unravels into a man perpetually on the edge of a shout, consumed by fury, desire, and dread. Is he playing the racial stereotype of the “angry non-white man”? Or more simply, it is just human nature. Just a man lavishing in his own anxious imaginings. He is unable to quiet the voice inside him; instead, Iago amplifies it. In fact, his reason knows Desdemona (Caitlin Fitzgerald) is innocent. She doesn’t even have time to sleep with Cassio if we inspect the timeline carefully.
But he desperately needs “proof” for reassurance, not the proof of Desdemona’s innocence, but the fuel to his raging. He holds onto it like that man throwing a Nokia from 10th floor, seeing it shatter, saying “See? I told you. It was never that strong.” It is a deeply entrenched desire for destruction, a misogynist inclination seeing all women as potential betrayers. But strangely, we still recognise him, painfully, humanly.
In contrast, Jone’s Iago is performed as a puppeteer drawing on the softest threads of each person’s desires and insecurities, like the serpent of *Genesis*. Guised as “the most honest”, he just suggests. This is an Iago who doesn’t need psychological depth nor traumatic drive to justify his villainy. Instead, he simply reflects that deepest, darkest hole inside human psychology. The true bright side of human nature in this production, however, lies in the sisterhood between Emilia (Vinette Robinson) and Desdemona (Caitlin Fitzgerald) that genuinely surpasses the thematic interracial dynamic but demonstrating lived tenderness.
Tom Morris’s direction is decent and unfussy, occasionally spotlighting slow-motion tableaux during Iago’s monologues. Ti Green’s minimalist set and Richard Howell’s lighting well support this psychological world through a restrained, minimalist aesthetics, holding energy even for the final killing scene. Meanwhile, PJ Harvey’s score is subtle and atmospheric, dissolving seamlessly into the conspiratorial air that quietly stirs that flickering fire beneath.
This show runs at Theatre Haymarket until 17th January. Tickets here.