Othello, 2000, Royal Shakespeare Company: Othello, Ray Fearson; Desdemona, Zoe Waites.

Othello: Director, Michael Attenborough; Designer, Robert Jones; Photographer, Donald Cooper (ahds.ac.uk/performingarts); Royal Shakespeare Company, January 2000.

"Attenborough's Venice, where the drama begins, resembles Edwardian England - the Duke and his council are all grey hair and frock-coats; Othello's soldiers are buttoned down into blazer-and-brass tunics, both a counterpoint to the hero's unfettered masculinity and a suggestion of the militaristic world from which his soon-to-be-destructive certainties derive." Brian Logan, Time Out 12.1.00 Opening Date: 6 January 2000.Theatre: Barbican.

Edwardian society preserves enough of earlier class-structures to be a plausible location for updating Shakespeare's more realist dramas. HMR