In Othello at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, director Tom Morris dispenses with zany thematic concepts and gives us a straight Shakespeare play. He has the right impulses: a rigorous focus on the acting and Shakespeare’s scintillating language. Yet despite its attempted mastery of both these domains, this production lacks any clear reading or interpretation. Emotions swing vertiginously without clear psychological developments, the racial themes of the play are unprobed, and an air of predestination pervades slackening tension. The plots, one feels, have already been lived, and there is very little at stake because the conclusion was written in 1604.
Toby Jones is not, like some Iagos, an artful director but a beady-eyed opportunist. He saunters around the stage unassumingly and exudes an impish energy (like a malevolent, martially dressed Puck). The usual motivation for destroying Othello—because he chooses to promote Cassio to lieutenant rather than Iago—doesn’t seem to apply here. What drives Jones’ Iago is a sheer delight in bringing about pandemonium.
David Harewood’s Othello, with his need for order and control, makes a suitable foil. In the opening scenes, he enters with equanimity as Brabantio (Peter Guinness, superb) launches into a splenetic rant accusing him of bewitching his love-stricken daughter, Desdemona (Caitlin Fitzgerald). Othello’s words are measured and uttered with effortlessly imperious poise, which defuses the situation. It makes the audience laugh, then, when in the play’s second half, Othello so readily loses his head at Iago’s suggestions of Desdemona’s infidelity. Harewood storms about the stage full of anger and self-created torment, like a cuckold in a Restoration comedy—‘How shall I murder him, Iago?’ he cries with comic hyperbole after witnessing Cassio with Desdemona’s handkerchief. Such a change in disposition feels stark rather than built up gradually in the play by psychological manipulation, doing harm to the narrative’s plausibility.
As one might expect from this high-calibre cast, their enunciation was crisp – every syllable was wrung out – yet the emotional potential of lines was missed on too many occasions, indicating stronger direction was needed from Tom Morris. The most developed acting, in fact, came from supporting roles. Vinette Robinson proved herself to be London’s Shakespearean actress du jour as Emilia, Iago’s long-suffering wife. ‘The ills we do, their ills instruct us so’, she contends in a conspiratorial chat with Desdemona, claiming the right of wives to be unfaithful. Her brazen sassiness, strength and intellectually dexterous arguments about male-female relations brought out Shakespeare’s deep sympathy for women’s plight and, rather pleasingly, showed him to be an adept writer of girl talk.
Courtesy of set designer Ti Green, the evening’s dark machinations took place on a stage which initially blended with the gilded interiors of the Haymarket. A series of gold frames were set up around the stage to represent Venetian grandeur, indicating civility and sophistication. Cyprus, by contrast, was imagined as a place of translucent coverings and spectral projections, where the internal is exposed and secrets come to light.
In his Othello, Tom Morris has created a comprehensible and polished production but one that does not penetrate the tragic core of Shakespeare’s narrative. For the most part, the audience are kept at a remove from the characters and do not easily sympathise with them. The pathos of the play is thus muted, and the climax lands lightly. The effect is as if Iago had been on a pranking spree, and Othello and Desdemona, poor dears, took the joke too seriously. Entertaining it may have been, but not, I suspect, as Shakespeare intended it.
Othello
Tragedy
By William Shakespeare
Director: Tom Morris
Photo credits: Brinkhoff Moegenburg
Cast includes: David Harewood, Toby Jones, Caitlin Fitzgerald and Vinette Robinson.
Until: Saturday 17th January 2026
Running Time: 2 hours and 45 minutes including a 20-minute interval.
Review by Olivia Hurton