Frantic Assembly's 'Othello' Lowry Theatre Salford 2nd Oct 2008

Frantic Assembly performed a heavily edited text that was cut right down the the bare bones of the story and did it in a very physical style with lots of dance or mime around the action.

The setting was a very seedy working men's club or pub, and they played on the ideas of gang (army) culture and race. The acting wasnt very good but the production overall was very pacy and visual and full of blaring music so it was fun and the students that we had taken liked it. Clearly well targetted at the 14-19 yr olds who seem to be the main audience for Shakespeare. School and college 'trips' are keeping most of these companies alive and the canny ones know it well!

The set was the big star. There was a leather banquette, a pool table and a fruit machine by the entrance to the women's loo - lots of play around who came and went out of that door! And then finally in the intimate scene between Emilia and Desdemona the set turned around to reveal them sitting on the loo seat sharing a joint.

The walls of the set moved steadily inwards as the action went on, so it became more and more stiffling, with no exits. When Iago got Casio drunk, they span the pool table round and round, and the walls undulated. Very dizzying. And when Othello finally staggered back from Desdemona's dead body, he took the walls of the set back with him, so the whole space exploded outwards. Very dramatic.

I missed the power of the language though. The text was so heavily cut and the acting so fast paced, highly choreographed and stylised that there was no oppotunity to luxuriate in the richness of langauge. Shakespeare for a visually literate, but linguistically deafened culture.