I had an invitation from Woman With Whom I Share A Godchild to the theatre not so long ago – a date suggested and (very swiftly)locked.
What neither of us had really factored into the plan was that the theatre was in Sheffield.
To be fair to WWWISaG, she had rather more reason to be ignorant of the exact locale, what with her being American. I, on the other hand, have absolutely no excuse at to thinking that it was probably in Zone 6 of the London Underground, or (at most) a thirty minute train journey out of London. This, to be clear, is not the case. Sheffield is a long way away from London: it’s a two-hour train journey, and once you get there – and you might want to sit down if you’re not already doing so – people talk with a differently inflected accent. True.
Anyway: we worked out the facts, and we committed to it. It was going to be a laugh and a carry on anyway (she’s very funny, amongst her many other recommendations) and it was in the service of Shakespeare (for whom I have seen Hamlet in Bulgarian, a Kabuki King Lear and – worst of all – Gary Wilmot as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in an open air theatre…) – so this seemed like a walk in the park, as it was to go and see Dominic West and Clarke Peters in “Othello”.
It was phenomenal. Dominic West is by far the best Iago I have ever seen: playing the part as a common sense talking, all-round good lad whose blunt logic takes him very credibly from “passed over” to “revenge by murder”. The best I have seen before were Ian McKellen and Simon Russell Beale – shrewd strategists and cold calculators both. West’s was the most credible soldier I have seen in the role. To be reductive (not for the first time), it seemed to me that this man was a soldier, a man of the army first and last. The army is about rules, rank and death – so if you break what are seen to be the rules of rank, then it’s only logical that the price will be death. The army also doesn’t welcome “the feminine” – and so, without a hint of trendy sexual politics or an alien extra-textual gloss, we saw a man who had no time for women: from his own wife, to Othello’s to Bianca. They got in the way, and were best used as pawns in the real matter of men dealing with men, according to the rules that they had chosen to live and die by. He avoided any hint of bathing in his own wit, smoothness of ability to control and played it straight down the line as good bloke to whom anyone would turn with a problem – and it was more unsettling as a result than any other painted, obvious villain.
He was equally matched by Alexandra Gilbreath as his wife, Desdemona’s confidante, Emilia. Sunny, smirking, taking nothing seriously: this characterisation served her brilliantly for the full guns blazing of the final act when she recognises her complicity in her mistress’s murder, at the hands of her own husband. She was railing at her own stupidity, horrified at how she could have been so naive, just as much as how her husband could have acted as he did.
Desdemona was great too: heart-stoppingly beautiful and credible in a real dog of a part (the only other comparably sized part that is as stinky is surely Miranda in The Tempest), she made goodness alluring, and handled the scenes with her father better than I have ever seen them done.
Clarke Peters didn’t quite do it for me, sad to say. His was the most “in love” Othello I can remember seeing (helped by the staggering beauty of his wife) and so the pathos of the finale really was enormous. But love seemed to be the only emotion that he did suffer an excess of: jealousy did not appear to be a problem for him – certainly not the sort of emotion that Iago needed to warn him of – and when he entered to commit the final terrible murder, he had the air of a man who was about to dial in for an irksome, overlong conference call, rather than one who has convinced himself that there can be no other course for him than to kill his once-loved wife. That said, he was an entirely credible commander of men, that Desdemona should defy her father for him seemed very possible and he seemed to be bowled over with love for her. He also managed the (almost impossible) “falling into a faint” sequence in a way that was neither embarrassing nor half-hearted – and that alone was a first for me, so he should be praised for much.
I can only say that I am very pleased to have discovered Sheffield – and with such an excellent companion – and that if the next show weren’t “Annie”, I would be up there again.
Eiljert Gabbles On 