On Saturday, my daughter and I attended the matinee performance of William Shakespeare’s Othello at The Pam Golding Theatre at The Baxter.
I had amped it up a bit, even going as far as saying that watching the play would better prepare her for when she came across it at school.
I conveniently omitted the fact that I had paid zero attention in class when Mr Robert Thorpe had read it to us in 1997/8. At the time, I had found Othello to be one of Shakespeare’s weaker works and a prolixious re-imagination of Romeo and Juliet. With a similar end, nogal.
But, multi-award winning playwright Lara Foot, who directs the play, clearly had other plans with this adaptation of Othello as she digs into historical traces of the deeply ingrained hatred, jealousy, envy and distrust that is inherent in the tragedy. Foot goes as far as repositioning Shakespeare’s remorseless tale into one beholden to European colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Imagine Shakespearean English, with a dash of Afrikaans and IsiXhosa.
Imagine it no more, as it has been done effortlessly on stage.
Although the diversity of the cast threw me off a bit in terms of suspending my disbelief when it came to the characters, Albert Pretorius who plays Iago, Othello’s malevolent ensign, did a good job of being a sneaky villain.
Carla Smith, who plays Desdemona, was convincing in her role and displayed “real” chemistry towards Othello. Atandwa Kani, who plays Othello, was a solid “starring” (main character), although I feel Shakespeare failed the powerful figure by setting him up as a gullible, savage brute who exerts inexplicable abuse upon his “Sweet Desdemona”.
Phantsi kwempembelelo zobugqwirha bukaIago (under the influence of lago’s witchcraft), the hero is also foolishly a villain.
The multiplicity of languages and deliberate Africanisation of Shakespeare’s work makes it much harder not to see Othello as a front for Europeans in Africa as he easily becomes Iago’s unwary marionette. Which begs the question: How much more power did the Venetian government have over Othello if a mere flagman (Iago) could pull him by the nose like this? Another play on today’s racial dynamics is Othello being cast to lead his crew to “war” in Namibia, due to the assumed affinity or rapport he might have with the natives as they decimate Herero and Nama tribes during the early 20th century.
“Where does the war fit in with this love story?” asked my daughter later.
She thoroughly enjoyed the play but struggled with the opening scene and felt that there should have been some narration to set the whole “where?” and “when?” of this adaptation, seeing as the director had relocated the entire production to the German colonial era and moved it away from Cyprus.
I mumbled a response, to the effect that the war served to assert Othello as a powerful general, who was worthy of holding down a relationship with a white woman.
If he had been a common “moor” during those times, it would have been impossible for him to even know Brabantio’s daughter, Desdemona. I also had to explain that a “moor” was a dark-skinned Muslim from North Africa.
It is a stellar production, with a convincing cast and invaluable life lessons.
Above all, Foot’s adaptation disrupts the centrality of Shakespeare and Western literature in contemporary spaces and “resists Eurocentric readings of the colonial past.
It highlights the role of theatre as both a political instrument to challenge colonial violence and a possible site for decolonial love,” according to Professor Shose Kessi, Dean of Humanities at UCT.
It is a plot filled with various twists and some will be pleasantly surprised at how Desdemona dies in this production.
The audience gave this play resounding applause, with some saying “Othello has been reclaimed into a revitalising rendition of a long-told tale that every person – women and people of colour – can now find themselves in!” and “I have never experienced anything like that! Bravo!”
The play has earned the Gustaf Theatre Award 2023 for Outstanding Artistic Achievement for the Direction of Othello, following its debut at the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus in September 2023. Othello is on at The Baxter until May 4.
Cape Times