And how wonderful to be coming back to direct such a fantastic play – one of the great Shakespearian tragedies. This time the castle’s heavy stone walls will become the war torn citadel in Cyprus - the scene of Iago’s destruction of Othello and the devastating murder of Desdemona.
The plot of Othello is extraordinary. Many of the earlier scenes are quite epic in nature, but as the story develops, the play narrows down and becomes an intense and fevered domestic drama. An emotional rollercoaster, culminating in the bedroom scene in Act 5 - possibly the most powerful scene in all Shakespeare. This is a scene which cries out to be played in shocking proximity to the audience and the designer, Philip Witcomb, and I are working on a staging which we believe will make this possible.
Four of Othello’s five acts are set in a war zone, but the principal themes are not about war, but about love, sex, race and prejudice. Issues that we still grapple with today. As always, Shakespeare focuses upon the human condition. Othello and Iago are parallel studies in what it is to be an outsider and the play offers us wonderful and frightening insights into the mind bending power of destructive forces which can dominate and blight our lives.
At the time of writing, our plans for the set are at the white card stage. We have a clear idea of the direction we will take, but we have yet to fill in all the details. Looking at images of Britain at war through the ages, Philip and I kept on coming back to the Crimea. For Othello we need a world where rank, class and taboo are part of everyday lives – and the mid nineteenth century certainly gives us that – but we were also intrigued by the way the war in the Crimea was also dominated by the presence of women. Othello and Iago both take their wives to war and we were struck by the pictures of women in those awful wards at Scutari and the rows and rows of damaged men on beds…
As with Richard III two years ago, we will be using a great deal of live music which will be composed, as we rehearse, by Thomas Johnson. Music is a wonderful addition to live theatre and brings special gifts. It heightens emotion, it supports the action and it liberates the imagination. It does this both for the audience and for the actors and I believe that it is the vital extra ingredient which helps take us to the realm of ‘total theatre’, where all our aural and visual senses are stimulated and the play, the setting and the collective imagination of all present are working together to make an exciting, unsettling, yet deeply satisfying experience.
Ben Crocker