Giles Terera with Rosy McEwen
(Picture: Myah Jeffers)Giles Terera is a superb and mercurial actor, one of our finest. After galvanizing turns in Hamilton, Death of England and Blues for an Alabama Sky – to name just a recent few in a career covering decades – he brings force, delicacy and dignity to Shakespeare’s traduced Moor in this powerful, monochromatic staging.
Clint Dyer, the first black man to direct the play at the National, gives its military milieu a fascist spin with blackshirt uniforms and clenched-fist salutes. The army here is a microcosm of a systemically racist society where the powers-that-be will exploit Othello’s military talents but won’t shake his hand.
