By Richard

It is not the easiest matter to do a review of Othello as a whole keeping the whole thing in proportion while Mandana Jones acted in it but I’ll try.
The performance successfully "modernised" Shakespeare by setting it in the physical setting of modern English while retaining the spoken language as it was. That immediately placed Othello in as modern a setting as it would have been as first performed and got away from the ‘antique’ and historically removed setting of doublet and hose and Tudor gowns. Likewise Chris Middleton’s Yorkshire accent did the same trick in narrowing down the distance and the part of Iago was the timeless manipulator of people and jumped immediately to become the prototype for which Jim Fenner out of Bad Girls is the immediately and worthy descendent. The British Army setting made the ‘lads together’ setting and provided a believable explanation as to why the noble Othello, whose qualities were praised in the early part of the play should so lose his head to jealous thoughts.
This process of modernisation was balenced just right that the references to Brabantio’s racialism, which was part of Venice, was directed at "the moor" so that connections were made but pitched at the right level.
In this setting, Mandana Jones had the job of her role and character not dropping into a trap of forcing modern feminist thinking into both her dialogue or her manner and she remained convincingly on the one hand "able to understand Othello’s anger but not his words" which was a key part of her role and played convincingly. She maintained her high standards of acting in being able to project, non verbally, the puzzled feelings of the character of Desdemona. The actor who played Othello, as the character who changed most, took Othello capably through the range of moods and pretty well maintained the intensity demanded.
A final theme in Shakespeare’s modernity is a quote from Paul O’Flynn’s Marxist "them and Us in Literature" where he speaks of "massive ,highly individualised characters, the first of their kind in literature. Into these characters, Shakespeare projects contemporary dreams of self realisation…." Compare this with a more modern storyteller called Maureen Chadwick who, writing of her own work described it as "big characters, big stories, big voices. It’s an ensemble show with a wide variety of characters from different backgrounds…these characters have really come to life and fired people’s imaginations…"
The success of the overall approach and the explanation of it I cribbed a bit from talking to Mandana herself!