Trump’s right-hand man Rudy Giuliani recently turned to Shakespeare to describe his contempt for the president’s former lawyer Michael Cohen.
The level of betrayal displayed by Cohen, now central to a potentially embarrassing and damaging investigation into Trump, was on a par with Iago, said Giuliani. Or Brutus, he said, though if Cohen is Brutus and Giuliani is Mark Antony, then Giuliani will end up praising Cohen as “the noblest… of them all”.
Anyway, judging by the sycophantic and fawning way in which Cohen comes across in his own secret recording of his conversations with Trump, Giuliani has a point. For, in this keenly awaited production, which sees Mark Rylance’s Iago paired with Moonlight star André Holland’s Othello, Rylance bows and scrapes his way into Othello’s trust with reptilian guile. It’s a performance that generates an intense dislike of a man whose impulse to hurt others is generated as much as anything by his awareness of his own banality and limitations.
Unlike the army berets worn by his fellow soldiers, Rylance’s Iago wears a battered flat-top cap that has more than a whiff of slave-owning confederacy about it. Yet rather than falling in with the consensus of past productions about the play’s racial politics, the big idea behind this production, directed by Claire van Kampen (Rylance’s wife) is that it subverts such assumptions.
Othello is not the only non-white character here. His army is a mixed race force with Othello’s favourite lieutenant Cassio (Aaron Pierre) among the non-white complement. Even Iago’s wife Emilia (Sheila Atim) is black which adds an intriguing layer of complexity, though it asks more questions than it answers about Iago’s motives.
Yet the most interesting aspect of Van Kampen’s take on the play is, as it should be, Holland’s Moor. His Othello is immensely likeable and has an easy, urbane manner that suggests that he is a thinker more than a warrior. He is also physically far from the hulking great fighter he is often seen as. In fact when Othello is in the full grip of the psychosis generated by Iago’s lies about the Moor’s wife Desdemona (Jessica Warbeck), Iago’s suggestion that Othello strangle her seems a tad overreaching. The statuesque Warbeck could, one feels, eject him from the marital tent with ease if needed. In the end, when he does the deed an aghast silence descends on the Globe’s usually exuberant audience.
No production of Othello can be said to have worked the way it should if the audience is not made to feel it is witnessing the most appalling crime. But what makes this one distinctive is that it refuses to pander to the view that underneath Othello’s sophistication, and his black skin of course, lies a savage whom Iago only need awaken to succeed in his goal.
Like the most interesting Shylocks, this Othello subverts the racist baggage that comes with the play.
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