Othello: a ‘deeply nasty tale of murder and manipulation’

It can be easy for Othello – manipulated and out-argued by Iago – to end up “looking like a sideshow” in the play that bears his name, said Susannah Clapp in The Observer. In Tom Morris’s new production, however, David Harewood is in command from the moment he strides onto the stage in general’s uniform. In 1997, he became the first black actor to play Othello at the National Theatre. Then, his performance was “impressive but sometimes strenuous”. Here, he is “utterly at ease in the entire range of the part”.

An uneven production is redeemed by the acting, agreed Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Harewood proves to be a “great, under-sung Shakespearean”, while as Iago, Toby Jones exudes a gleeful nastiness.

Jones is convincing in the role of the Machiavellian schemer, said Alice Saville in The Independent, but he doesn’t “channel the inner darkness you’d expect from this destructive force”. Here, the villain has “all the looming menace of a peevish middle manager”. At one point, when he makes a racist joke about Harewood’s “statesmanlike Othello”, it prompts uneasy laughter from the audience. They’re not sure who they should be rooting for. The staging does “grow into its horror”, and build into a “deeply nasty tale of murder and manipulation”, but while Morris is good on the physical violence – the audience “winces” when we hear a “spine snap, sharp as celery” – he is less so on the psychological violence.

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It’s when the women are foregrounded, in the second half, that the production “finds its focus”, said Dominic Maxwell in The Sunday Times. The American actress Caitlin FitzGerald is terrific as Desdemona. By “bridging classical and contemporary sensibilities”, she “helps you to buy into” the character’s inner life, and thus the “awfulness of her murder”; and Vinette Robinson is stunning as Emilia, her maid and Iago’s wife. By “finding more life in the story’s victims than in the insanely articulate men who talk themselves into unspeakable acts against them”, the production “ends so much stronger than it started”.

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London SW1. Until 17 January