National Theatre Live: Othello (2013) User Reviews

"It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on"

[TheLittleSongbird · 9/10 · 1 November 2019]

Have always had immense appreciation and even love for Shakespeare's plays, they are also very interesting to study and analyse (studying 'Macbeth', 'Twelfth Night' and 'Much Ado About Nothing', a few others but not as prominently, was one of not particularly many happy memories had of school). The National Theatre Live series is fascinating, just love how accessible it is too and how there is a mix of literary classics and new discoveries either done traditionally or as a concept production.

'Othello', regardless of any criticisms of considered implausibility (such as for some how easily Iago is believed by Othello and how long it takes for Emilia to come forward) and political incorrectness, is nonetheless one of my most fondly regarded Shakespeare plays. Not just the masterful language, with some of Shakespeare's most famous lines that have true intensity and poetic meaning, but also the dramatic conflict, both darkly intense and poignant, and one of his most interesting characters in the evil incarnate Iago (Othello too is one of his more interesting titular characters).

Am not going to respectfully agree with the previous two reviewers. While it is not a traditional performance and the concept on paper did not sound like it would work, actually found this 'Othello' great and not a distasteful one. As far as the Shakespeare productions at this (around mid-point) point of the National Theatre Live series go at this stage, found this one of the better ones along with 'Timon of Athens' and especially 'King Lear' (the still quite intriguing but uneven 'The Comedy of Errors' being the weakest).

There could have been more of what drove Iago to be as jealous of Othello like he is, and not having enough of that it was more down to race was a mistake and like Nicholas Hytner was being too careful in this aspect.

Conversely, the production has an interesting look to it and fitted the concept well. The intensity of the military camp setting is brought out effectively in the claustrophobic but never tacky look of the sets that fill the large space very well. There is a box-like look too cleverly used, capturing Iago's scheming well. The lighting is atmospheric and not too drab. Didn't ever feel the length of what is a long production, and the setting didn't come over as at odds with the story and themes. The storytelling is concise and a great job is done making it coherent, the main themes are present and done with depth and the crucial elements are handled neatly and with intensity, poignancy and sometimes humour without over-tidiness. A lot happens but it doesn't feel bloated and it is always done with taste and for a reason. The character interaction has full impact, especially the most crucial one between Othello and Iago. Iago and Rodrigo's interaction is equally as good.

Rory Kinnear's Iago is worth seeing this 'Othello' for alone, showing that he can play evil-incarnate villains just as well as he can tormented characters. He brings a wicked sense of humour, while not over-doing it, and also a twisted malevolence that is again not overdone so it makes Iago's deceit of Othello buyable. Adrian Lester is a tremendously powerful Othello, the intensity sears but nuanced enough to not become too manic and he is very moving at the end. Olivia Vinall is a movingly dignified but never passive Desdemona. Jonathan Bailey brings humour and pathos to Cassio and Lyndsey Marshal gives a fiery yet nuanced performance as Emilia.

Altogether, great production. 9/10

Disappointingly Flat Version of Shakespeare's Play

[l_rawjalaurence · 28 October 2013]

Set in a contemporary war-torn world of Cyprus, Nicholas Hytner's stage production has the principal actors as members of an army platoon; lost for something to do during a period of phony war, they end up trying to exploit one another. Iago (Rory Kinnear) is a schemer, someone highly jealous of Othello - especially when Othello receives promotion above him. Othello (Adrian Lester) is a competent soldier driven mad by jealousy - to such an extent that he has almost become insane by the end of the play. With a large supporting company dressed in sweat-soaked uniforms, Hytner's production vividly dramatizes the sheer boredom and claustrophobia involved as Othello's squadron is confined to barracks with nothing to do except exploit one another. However the production on film remains curiously flat: the verse-speaking is monotonous, to such an extent that viewers are longing for the three-hour production to end. More damagingly, this production largely neglects the race issue; in his concern to reinforce the contemporary parallels of Shakespeare's play, Hytner overlooks the fact that Iago's jealousy of Othello is more racially than personally inspired. This OTHELLO is worth a look, to be sure, but not really memorable.

Your Shakespeare is Too Small

[proteus6847 · 1/10 · 15 July 2015]

The National Theatre Live production of Othello (2013) features Adrian Lester as the Moor, Rory Kinnear as Iago and Olivia Vinall as Desdemona. Directed by Nicholas Hytner, it is set primarily in a 21st-century army barracks. The production has been shown in cinemas around the world, and is currently available on demand to British schools. I recently watched it on YouTube; it has since been removed. I didn't like it, and the following are my scattered attempts to explain why.

1. Othello's occupation was not only gone; it never existed. Adrian Lester's Moor had obviously never been on a battlefield, never killed an enemy of the state, never led a patrol squad let alone an army, never even received basic training. His sweet, doe-eyed face was that of a child, and his all-pervading gentleness wiped out any trace of martial authority. His sole attempt at a military stance consisted of folding his arms behind his back. "Farewell the plumed troops" seemed bizarre, not only because of the modern setting, but because the childlike Lester visibly didn't know what he was talking about. So intent was this production upon making Othello a victim that it neglected to make him a warrior and commander as well.

2. The Othello music was also gone: some of it cut, some it transposed into modern English, the rest of it filtered away by Lester's naturalistic delivery. Hesitant and halting, Lester groped for high astounding terms. When he somehow managed to find them, he muttered them apologetically, excusing them with audible air-quotes. Perhaps one shouldn't blame him. In this world of fluorescent lighting, camouflage fatigues, green metal lockers and toilet stalls, Shakespeare's language couldn't help but seem pretentious, indeed ridiculous: something for the speaker to be ashamed of.

3. Lester can cry at will, his wounded eyes leaking lie a sodden diaper. His suffering was believable, but it was his suffering or generic suffering, not Othello's. Nothing else inspired belief, including his alleged love for Desdemona. Othello sees his wife as "there where I have garnered up my heart,/Where either I must live or bear no life,/The fountain from the which my current runs/Or else dries up." Yet there was no convincing passion or shared sense of wonder between Lester and Olivia Vinall, who seemed more like old friends or next-door neighbors. Again, perhaps one shouldn't blame Lester. Vinall's Desdemona was merely an energetic tomboy, bumptious and wiry--cute, no doubt, but hardly the exemplar of physical and spiritual beauty that Shakespeare imagined. The hymns to her "divinity" intoned by Jonathan Bailey's plodding Cassio were doubly misplaced: this Cassio could never have framed such words; this Desdemona didn't deserve them.

4. Shakespeare's Iago says "I am not what I am." Rory Kinnear's Iago is what he is from first to last, and what he is is paltry: an East End pub-crawler, a dreary Cockney guttersnipe, incapable of devising multiple intrigues or taking down someone greater than himself. In the days of Edwin Booth, Iago was intelligent, dark, brooding, almost tragic in his villainy: a man with the stature to annihilate Othello. But nowadays a racist can only be a redneck, so Iago must be presented as coarse and stupid, full of low cunning but otherwise brainless. This is nonsense, since the man who improvises cynically clever couplets for Desdemona, who expounds his proto-Nietzschean philosophy to Roderigo, who destroys the Supreme Commander of the Venetian Army, is clearly not without mind or substance, however malicious. The bluff, uncouth soldier is a mask. The true Iago is a cultural and ethical materialist, systematically breaking down ideals, aspirations and achievements into their "real" constituents of political pull and animal appetite. Othello and Desdemona threaten his world-view. Eradicating them is the only way he can set things right. Iago is intellect corrupted by resentment; I would play him wearing glasses and thumbing a volume of postmodern theory. Of course, almost anything would be preferable to a commonplace rank-and-filer, since demeaning Othello's Nemesis necessarily trivializes Othello.

5. Chekhov once said, "We must not bring Gogol down to the people, but raise the people up to Gogol." Perhaps such high-mindedness is quixotic; perhaps most theater companies cannot afford to educate an audience. But there was a time within living memory when this didn't matter, when English theatergoers were so imbued with Shakespeare that attracting them did not require wholesale degradation. Those days are gone and will not return anytime soon. Until they do, we will have to endure productions like this one, where eloquence is suspect, elevation risible, and greatness itself a loathed relic of the past. They are the kind of productions that Iago would enjoy.