Karla Marie Sweet’s adaptation of Othello features a female Iago, references Billie Eilish’s paean to “chest always so puffed” guys and has an astute modern sensibility in its interrogation of gender roles and societal norms.
Sweet’s version is also dramatically taut. Co-directed by Paul Hart and Anjali Mehra, it moves with the pace of a thriller. The Watermill’s intimate stage is occupied by a rotating cube in Ceci Calf’s design, turning to reveal offices of state, nightclubs, boxing rings and bedrooms. Almost cinematic in its staging, the production is driven by a brusque swagger.
Sophie Stone’s Iago is a portrait of female masculinity and unnerving, calculated deviousness. The camaraderie of laddishness is deployed as a foil, and the smallest of physical movements – the furrowing of the brow, the roll of a shoulder – hint at violent undercurrents. In contrast, despite his fleet-footed boxing prowess, Kalungi Ssebandeke’s Othello appears to be constricted by his masculinity, one of simple trust and honesty. Both are excellent.
Emilia (Chioma Uma) is here given prominence and agency denied in Shakespeare’s original; the rest of the ensemble of actor-musicians are not only uniformed but also uniformly great. Their playing serves an important dramatic function as the staging is punctuated throughout by contemporary songs. While occasionally surprising, their use is often very evocative. Time slows down. If the stage occasionally feels claustrophobic in its military grimness, these musical moments expand the drama beyond the scale of the human and the jealousy of soldiers and lovers.
The songs also play a significant role in the staging’s persuasive contemporariness. That Othello contains racial and gendered violence is nothing new. But here, in a world where the presence of female senators and female soldiers is considered unremarkable, it would be easy to assume that it is also a world of equality. This is its modern tragedy; easy assumptions based on appearances can make us blind to the fact that it is still a world enmeshed with misogyny and racism.
• At the Watermill theatre, Newbury, until 15 October.
