Shakespeare’s Othello at Curve

Shakespeare’s Othello

at Curve

“It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” Co-produced by Curve and Frantic Assembly, Artistic Director Scott Graham tells us about his approach to the bard’s treacherous tale

WORDS BY LYN GARDNER, EDITED BY TOM YOUNG

For the purist, moving Othello’s setting from 16th century Venice to a pub on a run-down Yorkshire housing estate in a post-industrial town might be considered heresy. Yet, despite the update, every single word of this production was written by the great playwright himself.

“Shakespeare’s really very good,” says director, Scott Graham, wryly. “It’s 400 years of genius. We feel very lucky to be collaborating with one of the best writers in the world. We never wanted to rewrite Shakespeare, but we did want to do a version of Othello where the world makes the tensions and meanings in the play very clear. If you do that and do it well, then you can sneak the language in under the radar.”

The play tells the story of Othello, a black man who – in Shakespeare’s original – has risen up to become a lauded general in the army. In this adaptation, he is the leader of a local gang. His status begins to crack when he marries the daughter of a local white man. Set around the pub pool table, what follows is 110 violently watchable minutes, as jealous gang member Iago – who feels he’s been overlooked and underappreciated – betrays Othello, by convincing him that his young bride Desdemona has been unfaithful. The consequences are tragic.

Even though we are regularly told that the bard’s plays continue to have meaning in our contemporary world, Frantic Assembly do understand the stigma, with many people having been put off Shakespeare at school. For Scott, making the play exciting and contemporary is both the challenge and the privilege. Forget the idea of an ancient play in a complex language – Frantic Assembly has sought to make Othello a genuine, racy thriller.

“At Frantic, we’ve always been trying to make theatre which feels as if it’s about now. In many ways, I think our approach to Othello feels even more relevant now than it did when we first created it.”

Having first been staged in 2008, this revival lands in a post-Brexit world with much talk of ‘levelling up’, and where cultural movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo have created ripples beneath the surface of daily life.

“Looking at the play again, I realised how much of it is about community. At the start of the play, community is working. An outsider, an immigrant, has been welcomed in and risen to the top. But then something happens, and it sparks a darker reaction which allows a slow poison to be dripped into that community and corrupt it. The way it happens so easily is frightening.”

Othello will play at Curve from Monday, September 19 to Saturday, October 1. Tickets are available at curveonline.co.uk, in the box office, or via phone on 0116 242 3595.