Conquests and coffins

On Tuesday Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ewan McGregor take on Othello at the Donmar. If the show hasn’t sold out already, it soon will. Doubtless the starry cast will help shift a lot of tickets but so will the play’s peculiar ‘self-rationing’ effect. Of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies, Othello is the least often revived. The play has always been particularly problematic, not because it’s bad — though in parts it is — but because it’s so outstandingly good. The final act is perhaps the finest piece of pure theatre ever written, a sublime blend of nail-biting suspense, heartbreaking pathos and triple-fortissimo lyrical effects. That parade of virtues more than compensates for the silliness of Act III where Iago’s improvised trickery relies on a series of accidents involving a keepsake given to Desdemona by Othello — the handkerchief — which passes from Desdemona to Emilia, then to Iago, then to Cassio, then to the prostitute Bianca who happens to mention it in Othello’s hearing. A failure anywhere in this chain of transfers would jeopardise Iago’s scheme and probably spare Desdemona. The clumsiness of the narrative at this point invariably erodes the audience’s attention. And in academic circles ‘the handkerchief business’ is usually cited as a refutation of the view that Shakespeare’s plays are so naturalistic that they make one believe one is watching real-life events as they unfold.

A far greater problem than the plot, of course, is the issue of race. Though Othello is certainly the richest and most demanding theatrical role for any black actor, many are reluctant to attempt it because it emphasises the unwelcome aspects of the black stereotype: sexual vitality, the primacy of passion over reason, and a profound helplessness in the face of a white exploiter. Throughout the play’s history, race rumbles away in the background.