Director Anthony Almeida’s brand-new production of Othello is a major new co-production between Northern Stage, HOME, Citizens Theatre, and in association with Royal & Derngate. The production takes to the Royal stage as part of Royal & Derngate’s Made in Northampton season until Saturday 17th October.
Relocating the action to Britain during the early 1980s, the production finds a society in transition, where institutions still carry immense authority but the world around them is beginning to change. Against the backdrop of the Falklands War, Cyprus becomes an isolated military outpost where professionalism, appearance and belonging matter deeply, and identity itself becomes a battleground. Love, loyalty, race, class, gender and power are filtered through the everyday performances that allow people to belong – or leave them fatally isolated.
With Dwane Walcott (A Streetcar Named Desire, Almeida/West End/ NYC & Our Girl BBC) in the title role, this bold new production reframes Shakespeare’s Othello as a tragedy of assimilation: asking what do we become when belonging depends on performance? This dynamic staging examines the everyday negotiations that hold communities together until they quietly begin to tear apart.
Celebrated stage and screen actor Maanuv Thiara (Trigger Point, ITV & Boys on The Verge of Tears, Soho Theatre) joins Walcott on stage as Iago, and recent LAMDA graduate Phoebe Smyth makes her professional theatre debut as Desdemona. Rebecca Banatvala (Summerfolk, National Theatre) plays Emilia and Grace Hodgett Young, winner of The Stage Debut Award and What’s on Stage Best Professional Debut Award for her performance in Sunset Boulevard (West End) in 2024, takes the role of Bianca.
The cast features exceptional northeast actors Chris Garner (Coronation Street & War Horse, National Theatre) as Brabantio, Will Stanton making his professional debut as Cassio. Mattieu Sys completes the cast as Roderigo. Selected from an open casting call of over 200, he has been a long standing member of the internationally acclaimed theatre company Ontroerend Goed. Anthony Almeida said:
“I don’t think Othello is really a play about jealousy. Jealousy is the symptom. The tragedy begins much earlier – in the tiny acts of adaptation, restraint and performance we all make in order to belong. I realised Shakespeare hadn’t written a play about jealousy at all. He’d written a play about behaviour. Once we began looking through that lens, everything changed.”
“Setting the play in Britain during the early 1980s wasn’t about making Shakespeare contemporary. It was about finding a society where appearance, professionalism and belonging carry enormous weight. I became less interested in public politics than private intimacy; less interested in certainty than perception. Four hundred years after Shakespeare wrote it, the questions at the heart of the play still feel astonishingly urgent. They’re questions about who we become when we believe we have to perform in order to be accepted – and what happens when those performances finally collapse.”
Recognised for bold reinterpretations of classic texts, Anthony Almeida, multi-award-winning theatre and opera director, turns to Shakespeare with his first staging of Othello. His productions have received international acclaim, with Heroïne for Opéra national de Lorraine named among Le Monde‘s productions of the year. Almeida is the only director to have received both the RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award and the European Opera Director Prize. This production marks Almeida’s first Shakespeare, bringing his internationally recognised approach to reinvention to one of theatre’s defining texts.
The creative team is completed by Designer Natasha Jenkins; Sound Designer Matthew Tuckey: Lighting Designer, Sinead Mckenna; Video Designer, Erin Guan; Movement/Fight/Intimacy Director Giaele Mattioli; Production Manager Suzie Normand; Costume Supervisor Sara Mackenzie and Casting Director Karishma Balani.
Running at Royal & Derngate until Saturday 17 October, tickets for Othello can booked online at www.royalandderngate.co.uk/othello or by calling Box Office on 01604 624811.
