Photo/Mike Barlow (courtesy of Orangutan Productions)
Now on at Riverside Studios, Orangutan Productions’ film noir take on Othello – Shakespeare’s tale of racism, love, jealousy and betrayal (and maybe in a word, paranoia) – engages and beguiles. I hit the press night staging of Othello: The Moor of Venice and found it a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend a ‘school night’ which yielded an evening’s worth of entertainment that I could easily recommend.
Orangutan Productions is a new company with an aim “to fill a niche of high-quality, off-west end Shakespeare in London” and “to appeal to new audiences through highly stylised (portrayal) productions alongside cinematic marketing trailers, and pre-show workshops, to introduce and excite students about the beauty of classical theatre”. These days, I’m just a student of life. Nonetheless, Orangutan’s debut production appealed to me. In fact, allow me to use this review to remove my proverbial film noir fedora and extend an exaggerated Elizabethan bow to their ambition! If Othello is an indicator of what’s to be expected from this company, then indeed I am excited about the beautiful adaptions yet to come.
Now, back to the review …
Costume design was exquisite; the players oozed mid century style and rocked a monochromatic edge. Doing up the actors in such fine threads apparently took a substantial chunk of the budget though. Next to the impeccably clad cast, all other aspects of design stood out as notably minimal (if, for the most part, effective), with practically all stage action relying on a large rectangular box (to be a desk, table, bed) as the chief prop.
Considering the play’s ‘heavy’ subject matter, this Othello was by no means a cumbersome task to attend. At times, some performances came across as perfunctory, but the show never plodded or lost its clip. To be sure, all players did justice to their roles. Stefan Adegbola in the lead provided a particularly potent performance with Gillian Saker playing his especially sympathetic wife, Desdemona. And as is so often the case with even the most mediocre of a Shakespearean staging, the language washed over me in such a luscious way as I hardly ever experienced as an audience member.
Othello: The Moor of Venice runs until 8 February at Riverside Studios, 1 Crisp Road, W6 9RL. Find out more at riversidestudios.co.uk.
