Shakespeare’s military genius is reborn as a 21st-century detective chief inspector in Ola Ince’s modern-dress production. Iago is his sergeant, spurred into a hateful campaign against the “guvnor” because of Cassio’s promotion over his own. Unfolding in New Scotland Yard, amid a hostile white police force, it might seem gimmicky and designed to appeal to Jed Mercurio fans. But this is inspired revisionism by Ince, who brazenly turned Romeo and Juliet into a violent comedy, of sorts, with signs about knife crime, also at the Globe theatre.
Othello (Ken Nwosu) is initially led on in handcuffs. Characters wear full body armour, rights are read and radioed messages encapsulate both the racism of the outside world and Othello’s inner, or internalised, torments. The framing as a police procedural coheres well with the world of Shakespeare’s play and carries the chilling echoes of a Met still grappling with institutionalised racism and misogyny within its ranks – as well as distant resonances of the murder of George Floyd.
