1,052 posts
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Post by David J on Mar 5, 2017 19:55:14 GMT
There's some great performances here
I don't get how the Arts Desk could see Sam Spruell as uninteresting. His manipulations as Iago was subtle but enthralling that before he says "what says he then that says i as a villain" a few audience members were oohing and hissing at him. When he picked out a woman in the pit she rebuked with "I am watching you", and he replied "I'm the one who's talking here"
He is well matched by Kurt Egyiawan as Othello as his mannered, well spoken delivery is replaced by seething rage
However I didn't like the direction at times. There's use of strobe lighting, and at one point a disco ball and microphone in what is otherwise a period costume production
A lot of random ideas and the attempt to focus on the tragedy of the women is hampered by the fact that they don't have a lot of stage time. Even making Cassio a woman doesn't bring anything illuminating to the play as Tasmin Greigs Malvolia
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5,688 posts
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Post by lynette on Mar 5, 2017 23:36:32 GMT
Frankly I'm not sorry I'm missing this now. Doesn't making Cassio a woman unbalance the play? I always thought that the three women were kinda symbolic of womankind. But then we are having a moment with our Shakespeares aren't we? Can't wait to see the GCSE qs 😁
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904 posts
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Post by lonlad on Mar 6, 2017 0:02:31 GMT
>> His manipulations as Iago was subtle but enthralling that before he says "what says he then that says i as a villain" a few audience members were oohing and hissing at him. When he picked out a woman in the pit she rebuked with "I am watching you", and he replied "I'm the one who's talking here"
Gosh, sounds like the production has the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I don't go to Othello to engage in pantomime theatrics.
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1,476 posts
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Post by Steve on Mar 11, 2017 13:16:12 GMT
This is a functional Othello, with a powerful feminist slant, that is ham-stringed by that slant. Average. Some spoilers follow. . . If from the start, Othello doesn't love Desdemona as much as she loves him, how can this tragedy achieve full throttle (pun unintended)? Ditto with Iago, if he has no seductive qualities, how can we appreciate him as anything more than a cartoon villain? If Cassio is a woman, how much does that manipulate this production towards the conclusion that "men are bad, women are good?" Othello is introduced as a gob-smacked and soft-spoken political type, who far from being towering and noble is more likely to be cowering and feeble. Multiple renditions of Lana Del Rey's "Video Games" right, from the start, sound great but announce to us that while Desdemona feels "for you, for you, all for you, everything you do" about Othello, he'd rather be playing his metaphorical "video games." When Brabantio makes his disgusting and racist allegations about Othello's connection to Desdemona, Kurt Egyiawan's Othello looks more like a deer-caught-in-headlights, an elected official caught with his pants down, rather than a man defending a great love or passion. There is nothing about Sam Spruell's Iago that makes him relatable or charming, or indeed, anything other than a terrible villain. One contrasts, for example, how Rory Kinnear's bloke-from-the-pub naturalism made him sound like a friend whose jokes we'd laugh at, or how Ewan McGregor's conspiratorial charisma was electricly engaging in his childish excitement. If Othello and Iago are unlikeable men, Cassio, who is very likeable, has now had a sex-change into Joanna Horton's soft and endearing Michelle Cassio. That's right, there are no principals who are men, who are redeemable, and Othello's jealousy now concerns a suspected lesbian affair, which implication is that Othello is particularly offended about this because he secretly hates women generally. The lesbian love song of the show is Katy Perry's "I kissed a girl (and I liked it)" which seemed just a bit trivial for a weighty play like Othello. Looming over the whole play is Othello's omnipresent patriarchal bed, which is presented as something of a character, and which has an appropriate character arc, although it involves something of a misuse of PJ Harvey's song, "In the Dark Places." At the end, said bed is torn to pieces by the lesbian lovers, Cassio and Bianca, which fits the men-bad-women-good thesis of the play, but which impact is muted by the use of PJ Harvey's "In the Dark Places" which appropriately reflects the verdict that this bed is a "dark place," but somewhat defeatingly rolls back the feminist agenda with it's refrain that "not one man has, and not one woman has, revealed the secrets of this world." If the women tearing the bed to pieces does not reveal the secret that men's abuse of power MUST be disrupted, then what was the point of hammering the feminist message so hard at the expense of nuance and drama? I liked Thalissa Teixeira's noble and sensitive Emilia very much, and I liked more generally all the performances in the play, but I felt that the overall dramatic impact was muted by an all-too-obvious agenda. On the other hand, the production's clearly articulated thematic bent, coupled with it's use of popular music, make it likely that this is a Shakespeare production that could easily connect with young Shakespeare neophytes, who might otherwise be alienated by the archaic language. 3 stars |
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