Royal National Theatre’s new ‘Othello’

“If you want a play to speak, you must conjure a sound from it.”

So wrote the British director Peter Brook on the subject of reviving the classics. Otherwise, Brook warns, you run the risk of producing what he calls “deadly theater”— that is, the revival of classics based on past interpretations, imitation of previous performances and rote recitation of the original text.

Fortunately, Nicholas Hytner has heeded Brook’s advice. His new London production of Othello— now being broadcast in select movie theatres around the world— isn’t deadly in the least. On the contrary, it resonates richly in new ideas and insights into Shakespeare’s tragedy.

“The play feels like it was written yesterday,” says Hytner, and his directorial choices illustrate his point.

Take the setting, for example. In the original, Shakespeare sets the action in Venice and then on Cyprus, where Othello and his troops have traveled to wage war on the Turks. Hytner has chosen to set the action in a generic modern army base somewhere in the world today.

Boredom and alcohol

The sterile, modular prefab bunkers call to mind familiar images of U.S. encampments in Iraq and Afghanistan, where American soldiers have languished, barely active, for years. Skirmishes are few and intermittent, and the results are frustration, failure and useless loss of life.

Meanwhile, months of inactivity pass, while the troops (dressed in army fatigues) suffer from boredom and alcoholism. Latent violence is in the air, threatening to ignite.

Such is the culture of war, with its inherent extremes— for our troops today and for Othello’s 410 years ago. And just as our troops have lost focus and purpose, so have Othello’s.

Small wonder, then, that a sociopath like Iago finds fertile ground in this war culture or his own dark agenda. Indeed, the role of Othello’s aide— Hytner’s second contribution to a new understanding the play— is so dominant that you might very well call this production Iago rather than Othello.

Iago as womanizer

Past productions have suggested a subtle homosexual attraction that Iago feels for Othello. Others have focused on racial prejudice (Iago is white, Othello is black). In this production, however, Hytner keeps everything within the context of the culture of war.

Iago is a middle-ranking army officer who boozed, smoked and womanized his way through his career— and then is enraged when Othello, his general, fails to award him the promotion he feels he richly deserves. To exact his revenge, Iago plots the ruin of his leader’s marriage and his ultimate downfall, resulting in a spectacular slew of bloody deaths.

Hytner capitalizes on two dramatic elements: first, Iago’s darkly aggressive soliloquies, in which he takes the audience directly in his confidence. We relish the intimacy, equally thrilled and horrified to know the details of Iago’s scheme, blow by bloody blow, in advance.

Focus on the villain

Second, Hytner relies on a canny understanding of our times, when Shakespeare’s villains— Richard III, Claudius and Edmund (of King Lear), among others— have become far more interesting to audiences than his heroes. Even poor Hamlet, the Bard’s most popular protagonist, has recently been eclipsed by the villainous Thane of Cawdor, in an outbreak of recent high-profile productions of Macbeth.

No surprise, then, that Iago, played by the charismatic Rory Kinnear, steals the show from the righteous Othello, played by the appealing but less complicated Adrian Lester. In our era “without heroes”, as Arthur Miller lamented, the bad guys are just more intriguing.

Sexual abuse

Hytner’s third contribution to our renewed appreciation of Othello lies in his interpretation of the two leading female characters. Desdemona (played by the blond-haired, fresh-faced Olivia Vinall) comes across as an independent-minded young girl who defies her father and follows her husband to war, determined to play the loyal army wife. There, she befriends Emilia, wife of Iago (played by an intrepid Lyndsey Marshal), whom Hytner has shrewdly put in uniform as an enlisted soldier alongside her husband.

Embedded in the culture of war, the two women struggle heroically against the military’s inevitable sexual stereotyping and abuse. Iago whips Othello into a jealous frenzy over Desdemona’s alleged infidelity with Cassio, another officer. (The telltale handkerchief, with its innocent strawberries, feels like a jarring feminine detail in this macho culture).

Even so, when Othello attacks Desdemona verbally and physically, she bravely asserts her innocence and stands up to his cruelty. “How am I false? What ignorant sins have I committed?” she cries, standing her ground, shaking with determination, steadfastly professing her love, loyalty and integrity even in the face of his abuse.

Wife’s defiance

She is matched in courage by Emilia. The intimate scene between the two doomed women on the eve of their death is played with all the feminism they can muster within the confines of that hostile culture.

“I think it is the husbands’ fault if wives do fall,” Emilia prophesizes, with rueful irony.

“O these men, these men,” Desdemona laments, in response.

Given what we know of the staggering statistics citing abuse of women in our armed forces today, these lines have a frightening resonance. Ultimately, Emilia shows more courage than Othello in standing up to her cruel, villainous husband, even though it costs her life.

Hytner gives the last moment of his tragedy of war to Iago— handcuffed, mute, blank-faced, remorseless, as he gazes upon the pile of bodies (Desdemona, Emilia and Othello) whose senseless deaths he has caused. It’s an image of the devastating effect of post-traumatic stress disorder— all too familiar to a contemporary audience that’s also suffering from a surfeit of violence.

In our case, however, the violence is happening, too frequently, right here at home.