Times Online...
February 17, 2003

Othello
by Benedict Nightingale
Theatre Haymarket, Basingstoke

PETER HALL has often said that our actors need special lessons in the elementary art of speaking clearly when they tackle classic plays.
Nicholas Barter, head of Rada, has found that he has to concentrate more and more on teaching articulateness these sad, burbling days. Well, I’ve got ears sharp enough to challenge most bats to a hearing contest and, when I visited Basingstoke for Concentric Circles’ touring production of Othello, I sat in row G, which surely isn’t a dead spot — and again and again words were dropped, hurried over, scrambled and robbed of strong, stinging consonants.
Sorry to moan, but it seriously spoiled what was otherwise a decent enough evening. Christopher Fettes has enrolled a splendidly commanding Moor in Ricky Fearon, a wonderfully sly Iago in Christopher Middleton and an enchanting Desdemona in Mandana Jones.
But the only one of these who didn’t need a few hours with a voice coach was Jones. Middleton, though one of the lesser offenders, more or less lost the phrase “plume up my will”, which is Iago’s most fascinating explanation for his seemingly motiveless malignity. And I wouldn’t want to follow Fearon’s Othello into the field, because I might mistake his call of “charge” for a plea for a sustaining cup of char.
Well, let’s not berate the supporting players, one or two of whom sometimes mixed English with Esperanto, but applaud Middleton in particular. His Iago could show more venom seething within — this is not, on the whole, a production in which the emotional stakes seem sky-high or fathoms-deep — but you’re always aware that behind his moon-face and singsong Northern vowels he’s sneaking sideways looks at his victims, assessing, planning, deciding when to lurk and when to strike. And Fearon belies his bulky, commanding exterior with moments, if not of intolerable pain, of genuine poignancy.
The suits, dresses and (especially) uniforms seem to be contemporary American, which is fine but can’t exactly discourage verbal slovenliness. Agnes Treplin’s bleak, grey-steel set is adaptable enough to sprout a bar, a basin, and even a urinal for Daniel Betts’s Cassio, a nice guy wandered in from South Pacific, to shove Roderigo’s head into.
The surprises include commedia figures with bird-beaks as Brabantio’s heavies and a lady Doge with a weird, stilted voice (think of Eliza Dolittle when she’s handling words as if with sugar-tongs) and a cold so bad she keeps dropping used tissues into an aide’s briefcase.
But those are minor oddities by today’s standards, less distracting than the total omission of Act V Scene I. This meant that we didn’t see Roderigo try to kill Cassio or Iago murder Roderigo. But then we were told of the incident in the play’s final scene. Or I think we were.