N.T. LIVE: "OTHELLO"

Another month, another “N.T. Live...” (“and this time we're bringing her mum...” as the “Indiana Jones” Movie Posters never said...)

Anyway, this time it was “Othello” that we were seeing at the latest of the N.T. live broadcasts in which the cream of the West End stage is broadcast live to cinemas all around the country and the world, a rather brilliant notion well worth mentioning once again for those who’ve never come across the idea before.

I’d set off from home at the end of an exhausting working day which had followed another sleepless night and three days (and more) of my mother’s ongoing moments of crises, and so I wasn’t at my liveliest as I drove through the frankly quite dreadful traffic (must it always conspire to snarl up when I’m up against a tight schedule?) to collect the Beloved’s mother before heading over to the venue to battle for a parking space before finally making a rendezvous with the Beloved herself.

But we made it, and settled ourselves into our seats in one of three screens at which they were planning upon showing the play in that particular venue, which does, at least, show that the N.T. Live experience appears to be a growing one. Naturally, with the screening starting at 7.00pm, an awful lot of people seemed to be of the opinion that it would begin at 7.30, which meant that the cinema remained suspiciously empty with only ten minutes to go, and continued to fill up long after the play had begun, which can be quite distracting and does detract from the sense of “Live Theatre” that some of the venues attempt to convey.

There are always disadvantages to going out into the world and spending time with “real people” and this was demonstrated best because there was a surprisingly loud PA system to deal with when the various announcements of ticket availability, concessions stands and other aspects of life “inside the screen” we were in were being conveyed to us by the enthusiastic management team.

Sitting down at the end of the block of seats we’d booked did mean that I would be spending the evening sitting next to an unknown quantity of some sort, and, given that the demographic had already looked older than that of an average evening at the multiplex as we'd been waiting in the foyer, it was very likely to turn out to be an elderly lady and she did not disappoint, arriving with much fuss and bother, and commenting loudly to her companion whenever something “awful” occurred, or when someone featured during the introductions and intermission features said something that she personally approved of, or wanted everyone else to know that she already knew.

Perhaps it’s an age thing…?

To my shame, I’d never actually heard or seen the tragedy that is William Shakespeare’s “Othello” before, so I didn't really know what to expect, and it is, after all, a rather long play whose less-than-cheery themes might not quite have been what was required at the end of such a day to put me in any kind of high spirits. Watching it, did very quickly come to the conclusion (and vaguely recalled because I’m not completely ignorant…) that it was almost certainly not one of the comedies, and then spent a great deal of that long evening suspecting that things were unlikely to turn out well for our eponymous hero, and yet, strangely, really hoping that someone would step in and make sure that they would.

The play had been shifted to a very contemporary setting and was played out as if it was happening - after the plot shifts from a pub in Venice - in an army base somewhere in the Middle East, and this made it a very powerful and unsettlingly modern piece of theatre, even if some of the racial descriptions of “The Moor” do now manage to jar to modern ears.

The scenery, shifting from a well-realised pub exterior to several interiors based around shifting shipping containers around the set, was astonishingly good, and I was particularly impressed with the army compound itself which looked rather like a film set and had some impressive detailing on the fake concrete blocks which drew my eye – especially during the football game which kept the set “busy” during the intermission - almost as much as the “girlie” pics in one of the guard rooms also did. I suspect that they were never meant to be seen “close up” by the audience, but that’s one of the differences of having the cameras in, I suppose, that set designers have to consider.

There were some breathtakingly good performances from the cast, most of whom brought a fresh and contemporary take to the playing of the lines, although one or two did take a more “traditional” approach, which did jar once or twice  As the scheming Iago, Rory Kinnear was spectacularly good, giving a modern and “matter-of-fact” delivery which brought the play right into the modern world without seeming ridiculous, and Adrian Lester was simply superb as Othello, moving from the cocksure swagger of a general to the broken man, shattered and ultimately destroyed by the machinations of others seemingly so effortlessly, although the cast did all look pretty shattered after three and a half hours (and eighty odd nights) of this. Olivia Vinall, playing Desdemona had a definite air of the young Sylvia Syms about her, which was also a refreshing plus, once I'd realised just who it was that she was reminding me of.

The play ends, as tragedies tend to do, in heartbreak and at least one very graphic murder which was disturbing simply due to the brutality and waste of it, as well as by the way it was performed which was, as it should be, tragically terrifying. This has all been brought about by racism, hatred and jealousy, and man's inhumanity to man, so much so that you do find yourself hanging on the edge of your seat and internally screaming for someone, anyone, to step up to the plate and do the right thing before any further tragedy would unfold.

But then I suppose that’s what the play is trying to tell us about ourselves as human beings, and Shakespeare was extraordinarily good at getting right to the heart of that.

All-in-all an astonishingly good, if very late, night at the theatre. I stumbled home around midnight after sitting for a very long time in the car park trying to get out of it, and really, really not needing to do that at the end of such a long, hard day.

But I’m really glad that I was there to see it.