OTHELLO National Theatre/Olivier

Adrian Lester’s most recent performance was in Red Velvet, a play about the 19th century African-American, Ira Aldridge, a famous Shakespearian actor, who came to England and performed in Europe and Russia. The play allowed Lester to act brief extracts from Othello in an imagined 19th century manner. Now he is playing the full text in a modern dress production by Nicholas Hytner, opposite Rory Kinnear as Iago. Lester was to have played the Moor 15 years ago when he was in his late twenties. Wisely, he opted to make a film in Hollywood instead. Now 44, he is easily the most civilised person on stage. Two scenes are electrifying: Iago persuading him to murder his newly-wed wife and Desdemona speaking up on behalf of Cassio and she having no idea that Othello thinks Cassio is her lover. Frighteningly he keeps asking for a much-treasured handkerchief he had given her and which she has lost.
Hytner’s production is the best I have seen since Trevor Nunn’s production with Willard White as Othello and Ian McKellen as Iago. Hytner employed Major-General Jonathan Shaw as his advisor and the military perspective is invaluable. There is nothing romantic, or exotic about Cyprus. The performance is set entirely in a bleak, modern military compound, all concrete and wire fences, plus the sort of housing units used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Everybody wears battle fatigues; even Emilia, Iago’s wife, is a soldier. She looks like a guard in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
In the final moments Othello asks Iago why he has done these terrible things and Iago doesn’t answer. But the audience knows why. What rankles is that Cassio, who has never been near a battlefield, has been promoted over him. The truly jealous person is not Othello, but Iago, and it is he who drives the action. Interestingly, Laurence Olivier, who scored one of his greatest successes playing Othello, didn’t initially want to play him, feeling the actor who played Iago would steal all the notices. He usually does. One way to solve this perennial problem is to do what Richard Burton and John Neville did in 1956 at the Old Vic and that is to alternate the roles.