Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
Four stars
The streets on the TV screens are burning, the country is at war over disputed territorial land grabs, and the squaddies victory dance sees them waving their Union Jacks to Come on Eileen, missing the point entirely of a Celtic rooted song. Welcome to this early 1980s set Othello, where the fallout of the Falklands War and the UK’s inner city riots that preceded it add a new dimension to Shakespeare’s tale of tough guys trying to outdo each other in a white man’s world.
Central to this in Shakespeare’s play is General Othello’s secret marriage to Desdemona, the army brat who falls in love and ends up being caught in the crossfire of boys’ games. These are initiated by Iago, who is here a barrack room wide boy with ideas above his station. His slyness in playing everyone off against each other brings about everybody’s downfall, including his own.
Anthony Almeida’s production makes full use of its late twentieth century historical military setting, where the tensions of leading an occupying force ramp up the frustrations of bored men in uniform looking for action of one kind or another. With that action increasingly confined to a raised metal platform that forms the centre of Natasha Jackson’s set, surrounded by barbed wire, this army base setting becomes an increasingly isolated arena governed by the military’s own law. As Othello’s troops become cut off from the regular society they just conquered, traumas of war are channelled into more personal power plays between men very much fighting their own private battles.
The women, meanwhile, remain resolutely loyal to their respective spouses, no matter how brutally they are treated. What happens on camp, it seems, stays on camp. There is a moment of girls’ night in style bonding, however, between Phoebe Smyth’s Desdemona and Rebecca Banatvala’s Emilia as they duet on Tears for Fears’ Everybody Rules the World. It is a telling choice of song that pokes fun at the men in their lives in a scene that oddly resembles something out of a feelgood jukebox musical. Here, alas, there are no happy endings, only the calamitous effects of a slow burning psychodrama confined to barracks.
While Desdemona has grown up in this world, it doesn’t help her from becoming a casualty of it. Smyth’s performance bridges her sense of privilege with a guilelessness that only wants to love Othello, played by Dwane Walcott with a similar sense of joy in his private moments that go beyond his public duty as a leader of men that already sets him apart. As ever in the play, it is Iago who gets all the best lines, and Maanuv Thiara rises to the occasion with a study in two-faced control that makes for an infinitely more complex character than one-dimensional villainy.
Presented by a small army of co-producers including the Citz, Northern Stage and HOME Manchester with Royal & Derngate Northampton, Almeida's eight actor version is a slow burning and stately Othello. Pulsed by the seismic throb of Matthew Tuckey’s sound design, its specific setting is brought home even more by Erin Guan’s mainly live video design that at points resembles the TV news reports of old when war reporting had just become more portable and easier to see in close-up.
As with every production of Othello, the question remains of how its protagonist is dumb enough to fall for Iago’s manipulations. Is he a casualty of institutionalised racism, off duty shenanigans that get tragically out of hand, or is he just what used to be called shell-shocked by events of what is destined to be his last fateful tour of duty. Either way, everybody becomes collateral damage in a big, brooding take on a time bomb of a play that ticks its way to a final explosion that takes no prisoners.
The Herald, October 29th 2026
ends
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