When Shakespeare wrote Othello, sometime between 1601 and 1604, he couldn’t have imagined the horrors of racism that would follow the slavery he refers to … the genocide, the dehumanisation, the barbarity of it all. Lara Foot has added so many layers to her powerful and beautifully-staged adaptation, which is running at the Baxter until May 4. Far from diluting the Bard’s messages, Foot’s remixing and relocating of this cruel story of inter-racial love absolutely concentrates the treachery and the tragedy.
“More Shakespeare than Shakespeare”, Foot’s Othello moves the action from Venice in the 16th Century to Namibia (German Southwest Africa, as it was then) during the time of the Herero genocide. Timeless messages of love, cruelty, prejudice and naivety delivered for our time. The Olde English script is cleverly textured by the use of short passages in isiXhosa and Afrikaans.
Professor Shose Kessi, Dean of Humanities at the University of Cape Town, says the “ambitious and provocative decolonial interpretation of the original piece invites audiences to grapple with the legacies of the brutal violence of colonisation hinting at the Herero and Nama genocide in the early 20th century”.
She continues: “The piece fits into an emerging body of work that seeks to not only disrupt the centrality of Shakespeare and western literature in contemporary spaces, but also to resist Eurocentric readings of the colonial past. It highlights the role of theatre as both a political instrument to challenge colonial violence and a possible site for decolonial love.”
Foot’s retelling is brought to life by a dream cast. Atandwa Kani was always going to be our Number One, but now how could we possibly describe Albert Pretorius’s devilishly wicked Iago as anything less? As Foot says, these are “two of the best possible actors to play these roles in the world today”.
They might have taken all the prizes except for Carla Smith’s Desdemona stealing the show over and over, and Faniswa Yisa, as Emilia, bewitching us. It would feel wrong to exclude Wessel Pretorius (Roderigo), who brought a lightness and humour to it all. There really was hardly a member of the rest of the cast (Carlo Daniels, Wessel Pretorius, Morne Visser, Lyle October, Tamzin Williams, Awethu Hleli, Brendon Sean Murray, Nolufefe Ntshuntshe and Caleb Swanepoel) who didn’t personally deserve an ovation.
Othello is compelling, gripping even, throughout the almost 4-hour production. The compression and layering of 400 years of brutal context in this real and relevant adaptation often seems to explode and shower the audience with so many tiny shards of emotional shrapnel. It delivers so many blows, a million little cuts and bruises. It hurts.
The visual experience is very powerful with a set, created by Gerhard Marx, that seemed to expand with every scene. Kyle Shepherd’s musical score is so subtle as to be almost imperceptible in the first half. It is impossible to miss in the second half, although it never muscles in.
The Baxter’s first Shakespeare in nearly 20 years has been made possible by a generous donation of all the sets and costumes from the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus, where Foot previously presented a version of this production.
Lara Foot is brave, bold and brilliant in wrestling Othello into a semi-local context and a reality that is raw and familiar. I can’t help but wonder about how 400 years into the future, say, a Palestinian or Ukrainian writer might remix and relocate Foot’s own Karoo Moose …
Showing at the Pam Golding Theatre at the Baxter from April 6 to May 4. Tickets through Webtickets online or at Pick n Pay stores.
Thank you for this fine review of last night’s experience. It brings back the stirrings, the simmerings, the pain and pleasure of the experience.
The stirrings because it was a bright theatre night out in Cape Town with a fine and feathered crowd and amongst them I met the grand John Kani who had come to watch and stand in ovation for his son as Othello (and rightly so). For me to stand in the warmth of this grandest man of South African theatre for a quick shareable pic was to catapult back to the 80s when his brave voice with Athol Fugard and Winston Ntshona brought a wash of hope as they spoke of despair versus humanity. Simmerings because what pulled me in excitement to Lara Foot’s Othello was its relocation in German South West Africa and the brutal colonial project that saw the genocide of the Herero people. And pain because it’s Othello (duh!) and here we are and how different from then, when Shakespeare formulated this tragedy, from German SWA (and all that came next), and from now when Gaza, Sudan, illegal immigration, name your dystopia. To pleasure, a night out indeed, giddy and desperate both. One is not often so challenged. My question of the astonishing production was whether the brutal German colonial overlay may have been played out just a little more. Perhaps Desdemona’s lady may have been shaped in the distinctive Herero headscarf and wide skirt, perhaps just a shadow? The location so viscerally expressed at the start with maps of Africa torn apart faded too quickly for me back to Shakespeare’s script with just the odd incidental reference to the German powers. Where were the Herero ghosts? Those piles on the stage, were they iconic Namibian dunes, landscape? Were they piles of skins? Beasts? Human? I loved the idea of relocating the Bard to other times and other strivings. I yearned for a little more assertion without being too literal. Othello is so absorbing you forget where you are. I didn’t want to forget. I wanted to stay with the Bard abroad in history.
Oh and note to all future Shakespeare audiences: don’t, like me, be lazy and neglect to do your homework. Read the play before you go. Shakespeare is not Seinfeld. It’s hard. Prepare. You’ll be richly rewarded and not have to google Act V at midnight as I did.
Mostly thank you Lara Foot, thank you magnificent Atandwa Kani and cast. It was an astonishing night.