To Stratford to see Othello. A late booking resulted in a great price for a room at The Arden:
A rest and a change and we headed off to The Encore for dinner. View from our table on the first floor:
A burger for me and lamb rump for Amanda:
To the theatre:
And so - what of the play?
This was the first time we had seen Othello. Although I had made myself familiar with the plot beforehand, I was certainly not au fait with the details of each scene. I knew that the play was supposed to begin with a conversation between Iago and Roderigo; however, when the first two actors on stage began to speak, I began to think that perhaps I had missed some detail, and that this was an initial 'stage-setting' conceit by a pair of minor characters - think "Night Watchman 1 and Night Watchman 2". One character in particular, spoke so quietly and quickly as to be barely audible or comprehensible from our usual seats in the centre front row of the first balcony.
Imagine, then, my dismay when it became clear that these two were, indeed, Iago and Roderigo. I wracked my brain - usually I make myself aware of posters announcing last-minute changes to the cast, but I recalled nothing about that night's performance. In spite of this, I became convinced that not only must Iago be being played by an understudy, but by an under-prepared and nervous understudy at that. Sadly, no such excuse could be applied.
Will Keen, playing Iago, is an experienced and capable actor of stage, film and TV so, being charitable, I could only conclude that his performance was the responsibility of director Tim Carroll. Unfortunately, what might have worked on TV, or even in a studio theatre, where sotto voce dialogue, subtle inflections and underplayed facial expressions would all be observable to the audience, here it just didn't work. Further - the performance was simply not consistent with the view that Iago is one of Shakespeare's most malevolent villains. Later, I also reflected on the fact that it did not seem likely that a man of Othello's age, maturity and experience would be so taken in by someone so apparently creepy and obsequious as this Iago.
I persevered, straining to hear and understand Iago and also trying to ignore the voices in my head that had started to declare, "This really isn't very good, and some of the staging is equally bizarre". As an example of the latter, there were a number of instances of what Peter Viney in his blog (listed under Reviews below) called "declaiming forward". That is, characters spoke their lines straight out to the audience (it felt as if we were in direct line of fire), even though the characters to whom they were speaking were standing on balconies behind them. Those characters, in turn, also declaimed to the front of the stage, but thereby effectively to the back of the heads of those to whom they were speaking. Viney described this as a "strong style choice"; I described it somewhat less charitably as "confusing and pointless"...
The interval. Fearing I was alone in my observations, I held back until Amanda caught my eye and we both burst out laughing. "It's not my imagination - this is bad, isn't it?", I asked her. "Oh yes!", she confirmed. We compared notes and she confirmed most of my feelings. For a brief moment we considered leaving - for the first time in 45 productions over a decade, but since we had paid good money for our seats, had a hotel room across the road, and nowhere else to be, we decide to stick it out.
When we returned to our seats, a very pleasant young woman sitting next to Amanda asked if we were enjoying it (it was clear from her demeanour that she was). Trying hard not to 'harsh her buzz' we responded gently in the negative and explained why - one of the first indications that this truly was a Marmite production.
To be fair, I enjoyed the second half slightly more than the first, but largely that was due to there being more action, rather than any improvement in the production. However, once again the stylised direction left me cold in places. Specifically, the decision to stage Othello's killing of Desdemona in a complete blackout might have seemed good at the time - "imagined horror is worse than actual", and all that - but it didn't work, and the author of "The Real Chris Sparkle" blog (link below) summed it up perfectly:
"The ultimate act of horror in the play, when Othello kills Desdemona, is unexpectedly performed in total darkness, as if to deny it’s really happening. All we can hear is some uncomfortable scuffling, like the sound of a fishmonger trying to restrain a feisty flounder flapping around on a slab. I’m afraid it was quite ludicrous."
The mainstream media reviews for the production had been mixed, with an average rating hovering around 3 out of 5. What proved more interesting was, after the performance, reading the comments on the RSC Facebook pages relating to the play. It quickly became clear that a significant majority of theatre goers were enchanted and enthralled by the production, eulogising about both the direction and the performance of Iago in particular. Somewhat reassuringly there were a smaller, but still significant, range of responses that cited the same criticisms we had voiced. Following an exchange of comments with some who enjoyed it I concluded that it would be genuinely interesting to study (if only the data were available) the correlation between "enjoyment of production" and "distance from stage", "number of RSC productions previously seen" and "age of audience" - perhaps we were just too far from the stage, too old and too programmed by other plays to see the supposed good in this one.
My final comment - possibly unfair, but a view genuinely held: while I was watching Iago, I kept being reminded of a series of sketches in the BBC comedy programme "The Impressions Show", in which Jon Culshaw poked fun at Ross Kemp and his programme "Ross Kemp on Gangs". Never again will I be able to watch Othello without thinking of Will Keen's Iago, and Culshaw's "I could see it was about to kick off - so I got out of there!"
A good night's sleep, and then down to breakfast:
followed by a walk around town, some shopping and then a straightforward run home.
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