Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Emma Bispham, Patrick Brennan, Paul Duckworth, Marc Elliott, Cerith Flinn, Leah Gould, Emily Hughes, Golda Rosheuvel.
Photograph used with kind permission by the Everyman Theatre and Jonathan Keenan.
Change a moment, whisper down the ears of others around you words of sweet poison, let the drip of misinformation gather pace and be content in watching the world, which was at peace, rip itself apart and burn itself to a cinder. It is in such actions that happiness falls, that death is chased by murder and hatred festers.
Such words, from a considered friend, are the venom to the ear, soiled, polluted and dangerous contempt, they are the whispers in which revenge for imagined slight or torturous passions lay and one in which Shakespeare’s Iago is rightly famed.
It takes a brave, undeniably fearless director, one not afraid to pull at the seams of established story-telling and centuries old theatre insistence, to change the meaning with a simple cast change of the noble Moor, Othello, it is one that Gemma Bodinetz and the Everyman Theatre Company has once again been instrumental in being able to perhaps alter the perception of the meaning of jealousy, of sowing greater seeds in the pursuit of resentment and envy, by making the pivotal character and eponymous hero a woman, the play takes on greater meaning, the politics of envy is subverted and it becomes about gender and sexuality, it becomes meaningful a talking point on how some men are somehow threatened by this imaginary insult to their manhood.
The casting of a woman in a role traditionally seen as very much masculine is not new, however the part of Othello surely would have been one that no director would have dared challenge, yet in the hands of the sublime Golda Rosheuvel, the obsession of the man becomes the beautiful passionate rage of the woman, and with great support from the likes of Paul Duckworth, the finality and reckoning of the play takes on greater importance on how we view certain people and set about destroying their faith, their love and their humanity.
Congratulations must also be laid at the door of Y.E.P. member Leah Gold who immersed herself into the huge task of portraying Bianca with charm and passion, a strong wind of charisma that added to the overall contentment of the production and proved yet again how important Y.E.P. is to the continuing success of art and theatre in Liverpool and the future it holds.
Be brave and change the narrative, allow the voice of a different gender to take the lead and suddenly the world and its affairs can often make sense; it is an act of absolute courage and possibility that makes this production of Othello at the Everyman a sumptuous piece of theatre.
Ian D. Hall