A degree of brevity and levity defines Frantic Assembly's electric new interpretation of Othello. Under two hours long, and infused with intervals of passionate dance, it reinvorates Shakespeare's canon with imaginative transposition and irreverence, yet manages to maintain a lightness of touch. Abridged, adapted and directed by the company's Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, the point of conflict now takes place at 'The Cyprus', a pub in the north of England. Inspired by Nick Davies' book 'Dark Heart: The Shocking Truth about Hidden Britain' - an investigation into racial and social tension - this Othello aspires to depict universal themes (described by the pair as 'dissolution and disenfranchisement') through an alternative prism of time and place.
       Designer Laura Hopkins oversees a sleazy stage of bar-room gloom: spare furnishings enlivened by a lone pool table (later serving as a bed) and ancient fruit machine. Glimpses of a graffitied lavatory and delapidated car park complete the staging, while the flexible outer walls serve as a versatile boundary from which bounce drunken or conflicting characters in flight. Chauvinistic, skin-headed protagonists glower like proto-hooligans, clad to a man in wife-beater vests and low-slung pants. Their down-trodden consorts, in tightly-stretched track-suits, sport visible underwear and hair scrunched into Croyden face-lifts. The effect is raw and visceral; unashamedly de-glamourised - even de-humanised.
       With the exception of our anti-hero, the cast affect Yorkshire voices which emphasise the production's would-be mood of gritty, Northern realism - one can only wonder if the directors felt that an accented lead would appear too close to parody? F-words abound, beer is guzzled, and billiard cues serve as both weapons or phallic symbols. When Marshall Griffin's Brabantio accuses Othello (a peacock-posturing Jimmy Akingbola) of seducing Desdemona, by way of drugs and magic; Claire-Louise Cordwell, as his dope-smoking daughter, makes this amoral deceit all too believable: 'virtue into pitch' indeed! Evil Iago (an under-powered Charles Aitken) channels the gangs' lust, ambition and prejudice towards their inexorable conclusion - a climactic blood-bath which robs waster and wastrel alike of leadership.
       Strong meat, the soundtrack is by Hybrid - a band known for their charismatic combination of electronic dance sounds with orchestral arrangement - and feaures material from all three of their albums. We hear it as background music accompanying the text, as well as a strident theme to dance sequences delineating acts and scenes. The latter are only partially successful, feeling over-extended at times, or appearing uncomfortably reminiscent of a West Side Story-type musical. The calibre of the dialogue is similarly flawed, as projection and diction are often lost to hyperkinetic action.
       Frantic Assembly's diminished role-call calls to mind the sensibility of television's microcosm, Little Britain, and shocks and entertains in equal measure. It may constitute riveting theatre, but it loses sight of the big picture in the process. Ineluctably, the transmogrification of Othello to regional mediocrity, deprives us of the monumental and political qualities inherent in the original. Tant pis.
Caroline Kellett Fraysse