Othello

On Wednesday to the National to see their Othello.

Previous outings being to the Rose at Kingston (with Lenny Henry) on or about April 23rd 2009 and to the Globe on or about August 15th 2007. Reports from both occasions at the other place (http://www.pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/).

After I had bought the tickets, and having seen a not very kind review, a bit alarmed by the prospect of modern dress, which can be tiresome. In the event it worked well with a nice evocation of a portable office filled army base and with soldiers running around in sand coloured camouflage - maybe battledress is the technical term. The staging was elaborate, rather clever and rather fetching, but by the end I felt it had become a distraction; the producer had forgotten he was producing drama for the stage rather than a costume drama for television.

But the production was believable and accessible. One had a real sense of both the possibility and the foolishness of a young girl from a posh family being captivated by the tales of a rough and ready - but successful - soldier. Desdemona was nicely weak and flirtatious; good body language. Othello was good. Emelia satisfactory but not as good as either of those of the other two productions. Roderigo, as is the current and tiresome fashion, played for laughs. Rory Kinnear grappled manfully with the problem of being a good non-com., rather ordinary and very evil all at the same time, without quite pulling it off. But, to be fair, I don't think I have ever seen it quite pulled off.

Audience tittered at some of the wrong places, sometimes because Othello's decent & honourable trust in Iago, a man with whom he had stood in the line of battle many a time and oft, seemed ridiculous to them. Perhaps because honour is a quality no longer much in evidence among those who used to be called the great and the good.

Another part of the audience appeared to come from some mixed race London comprehensive, with the only comment that I heard being boredom. We wondered how much preparation would have gone into their visit - my mother would have built a term's English lessons around any such visit which she organised - and whether the play would have got lost in virtuous breast beating about race relations.

And then wondered how many plays in the oeuvre deal with the proper relations of daughters to their fathers after their marriage. See Act I, Sc. III, line 180.

Running time seemed OK at around 3 hours, exclusive of interval. This despite quite a lot of cutting and despite omitting all the song and dance which the Globe likes to inject into the proceedings. The drinking song, for example, was dealt with very briskly.

I note in passing that the National put up a black on the feeding front. Perhaps it was because it was a mid week, early matinée, the catering arrangements failed. We had allowed about half an hour for feeding, but the National was unable to provide a sandwich, or at least we failed to find one, so we had to hoof it over to the BFI where they did sell sandwiches, rather fat and soft affairs which were intended to be livened up by toasting. But in view of the time we took them at room temperature, learning along the way that a sandwich described as Parisian involved both Brie and chutney. I had not known that the Parisians ate chutney at all - although I did know that I did not, the strong flavours of chutney being destructive for me of those of whatever you have plastered the stuff onto. But they were elaborately wrapped and they did keep us going until the tea time mince, which was a stronger attraction than anything offered in the vicinity of Waterloo Station, at least on this occasion.