2014 Company Profiles
ALAN COVENEY
ACTOR
This season:Corin in AS YOU LIKE IT, Richard Noakes in ARCADIA. Previously for SATTF: RICHARD III TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, KING LEAR, OTHELLO,THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, HAMLET, Caska in JULIUS CAESAR, ANTONY & CLEOPATRA, Egeus & Robin Starveling in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, Sebastian in THE TEMPEST, RICHARD II, and Angelo in THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. Over a thirteen year period Alan produced, directed and acted in many productions as a founder-member of Show of Strength Pub Theatre Company, producing new writing and rare classics.
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Othello 2007
8th February - 17th March 2007
Leo Wringer as Othello. Photo: Alan Moore
Director's Notes
Welcome to our eighth season of intimate theatre at the Tobacco Factory. Our 2006 season was very nearly our last, our production of Titus Andronicus playing to much smaller audiences than we expected and provoking a financial crisis; but our supporters came quickly and generously to our aid and we now return with two of the strongest plays in the Shakespeare repertoire, Othello and Much Ado About Nothing.
In the year that we commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade we present first a great tragedy which, in its stage history since 1800, has to some extent reflected the changing position of black people in Britain. The story of a marriage between a black African man and a white woman, Othello had been popular in the repertoire for two centuries when, led by Edmund Kean, the theatre chose to lighten Othello’s colour and make him a Berber Arab, so avoiding the depiction of a member of a slave race kissing a white gentlewoman on stage. Even a hundred years later in 1930, when Paul Robeson was the first modern black actor to play the part (in Stratford and then on Broadway), the sight was novel, even explosive.
In the intervening years the controversies have changed their nature; from the 1960s centring on whether or not it was any longer acceptable for a white actor to ‘black up’ to play the part; and later, on whether Shakespeare’s depiction of Othello was, in itself, racist.
We offer the play - with no reservation – as one of Shakespeare’s very greatest, the classic study of the ‘green-eyed monster’, jealousy.
* * * * *
We know almost nothing of Shakespeare’s sexual life, except that he married a woman eight years older than himself and fathered three children, but left all of them in Stratford to pursue a twenty-five year career in the London theatre. Of extra-marital passions, infidelities and jealousies – if any – we know nothing, apart from four centuries of speculation based on enigmatic references in the Sonnets.
But throughout his life, in both comedy and tragedy, he writes vividly of sexual passion as the most unruly and volatile of all human emotions, apt to convulse – sometimes to destroy – even the most capable, rational and powerful of men and women. Orsino threatens to kill Viola, and Malvolio makes himself ridiculous in yellow stockings in Twelfth Night; Leontes fantasizies about his wife’s adultery in The Winter’s Tale; the lovers fight by night in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and Goneril and Regan compete, fatally, to commit adultery with Edmund in King Lear. The celebrations of sex in the lighter plays are counterpoised by the mayhem it wreaks elsewhere.
Othello is the most unblinking study of this. A confident, successful and honoured general, who has survived into middle age without venturing on romance is deconstructed by it in a matter of days – his poise, his patience, his authority blown apart as effectively as a city wall by one of his own heavy guns. That he is black is a detail – simply the most potent of Iago’s tools to upset his master’s equilibrium, to drive a wedge between his reason and his instincts. Shakespeare’s is no racist perspective; that black men are particularly suggestible, particularly jealous, particularly violent – these are slurs entertained by those far too comfortable in their ignorance of their own natures.
As always Shakespeare writes of the human condition, of the delight and the chaos that shadows us all. Andrew Hilton
Cast
Roderigo Byron Mondahl
Iago Chris Donnelly
Brabantio Paul Nicholson
Servant & Bianca Phoebe Beacham
Othello Leo Wringer
Cassio Philip Buck
Senate Officer & Soldier Morgan Philpott
Civil Officer & 2nd Cyprus Officer Russell Bright
Duke & Montano Alan Coveney
Lodovico Paul Currier
Gratiano John Walters
Secretary & 1st Cyprus Officer Nicholas Gadd
Desdemona Saskia Portway
Emilia Lucy Black
Production
Director Andrew Hilton
Associate Director Dominic Power
Assistant Director Chris Loveless
Set & Costume Designer Chris Gylee
Costume Supervisor Corina Bona
Costume Assistant Miri Birch
Lighting Designer Paul Towson
Composer & Sound Designer Elizabeth Purnell
Fight Director Kate Waters
Production Photographer Alan Moore
Pre-Production Photographer Graham Burke
Production Manager Tim Hughes
Stage Manager Jayne Byrom
Deputy Stage Manager Eleanor Dixon
Assistant Stage Manager Adam Moore
Costume Laundry Kim Winter
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Saskia Portway as Desdemona. Photo: Alan Moore
Reviews
The Guardian
13th February 2007
* * * *
This time last year, Andrew Hilton's unsubsidised company, Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, faced closure. Supporters raised £30,000 to guarantee its survival, and Hilton's tenacious team is now back with more Shakespeare, again without public funding, in this charismatic venue.
Such a recent reminder of the company's perilous existence makes Hilton's production of Othello all the more precious. There is seemingly no problem this year with ticket sales - long queues formed for the unreserved seating over the weekend - and the audience was transfixed during three hours of Shakespeare pared down to the bare bones of thrilling language.
Played in the round and with admirably simple staging, Hilton's version builds slowly and carefully to its terrible denouement. There is very little in the way of embellishment or stage trickery: the set is limited to a stone floor, a dining table and Othello's marital bed. Such an uncluttered approach is not only cost-effective, it also clears the way, quite literally, for some superb performances.
Chris Donnelly's Iago is the most restrained and unshowy I've encountered, and this makes the seeping of his poison into Othello's mind all the more compelling and credible. As Desdemona, Saskia Portway is utterly convincing as a bright, besotted new wife and a woman wronged in a man's world, perched alone at the edge of a room while the men talk war.
Leo Wringer's Othello, a commanding performance from the start, begins with a warm, quiet dignity which he loses as he becomes Iago's hopeless plaything. His transition, the thing that any production of Othello must render real to its audience, is made absolutely plausible here and, in the final scene centred on that marital bed, still shocking to behold. Elizabeth Mahoney
The Independent
21st February 2007
* * * *
Last year's Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, Titus Andronicus, could well have spelt doom for this much-prized theatre. Poor attendance left the small company mired in a five-figure debt and on the brink of closure. It's good to report, then, that after some sharp fundraising, artistic director Andrew Hilton has produced a first-rate Othello, which should put the venue back in the black, as it were.
It's a bold choice of play - Othello is regarded as a casting nightmare. It is staged, I would guess, roughly once to every five Macbeths, Lears or Hamlets. Most productions of the play feel the need to issue some great statement about race, perceptions of colour, and so on. Hilton's production has a black actor in the title role but it is content to focus on the wider story, which all turns on one malicious accusation of sexual deceit. In this Othello, the story is the thing and we watch in horror as the great general is taken apart psychologically and then destroyed by his most trusted lieutenant.
Staged in the round with no scenery whatsoever, the costumes locate the action somewhere in the 19th century. The Venetian senate wear frock coats, the military blue serge. Iago looks like a Victorian peeler. From this buttoned-up world of machismo and convention Desdemona springs wide-eyed to cavort with her adored celebrity general.
Leo Wringer's Othello is a true revelation - a virile, shaven-headed warrior-poet. You can hear his every word and he seems to delight in the poetical magic that the general pours on the political proceedings. Desdemona (Saskia Portway) has fallen for him and their intimacy is wonderfully unforced - until, that is, Iago sows a seed of hellish doubt as to her faithfulness.
I have seen more wicked Iagos but none so business-like as Chris Donnelly's passed-over NCO, whose crisp manner conceals a heart of bile. There's a depth to his evil that is unknown even to him. There will be those who quibble that the play could major more on issues of race than - as here - character. But the show's gripping strength is that it becomes a roller-coaster ride of tragic inevitability. The result is thrilling. Robert Gore-Langton
The Sunday Times
* * *
Like many of Andrew Hilton's productions, this comes across almost like a new play. Roderigo, for example, is usually played as a gullible dimwit. Here, Byron Mondahl comes on indignant and aggressive: promises have been made, and lago had better keep them. Iago (Chris Donnelly) gradually becomes more and more sinister because there's nothing sinister about him: a quiet, thin-lipped, open-faced fellow, amenable, matter-of-fact, calm. Never underestimate a quiet man. On racism, Hilton takes a moderate line, though it's clear that the duke and senators are not above patronising Othello. But Leo Wringer plays an assimilated Moor, soft-spoken, calm, almost casual. He knows that he belongs. It's this quiet confidence in himself and in his place that makes his disintegration so pathetic and moving. In moments of anguish, Wringer's voice tends to break up, so you're not sure whether it's the actor or the character who is out of control. Indeed, most of the cast sound indistinct when they face away from you. Saskia Portway, as Desdemona, delivers her best performance for this company: a warm, playful, sensual woman, dignified even in death. John Peter
The British Theatre Guide
Andrew Hilton's current production at the Tobacco Factory is lit from within by the consuming passion between Leo Wringer's Othello and Saskia Portway's Desdemona: none of the stylised, castrated love so often resorted to in lesser productions. These two have a grounded and playful relationship: Wringer delights in a languid, North African pronunciation of his wife's name, just as Desdemona later mimics his accent in her speech. In fact, Hilton has the whole cast work with this easy naturalism, whilst never detracting from the rhythm of the text, with the result that the production is utterly engaging. The moments of dramatic irony, (Othello's, "honest Iago", for example), elicit a collective groan from the audience and you feel everyone squirm as one, at the palpable tension of the final act.
Wringer is a spectacular Othello. From the moment of his first entrance, he draws all eyes. He exudes that dignity that comes with self-reliance and a clear conscience. His Othello is a consummate story teller. In his lilting North African delivery, the natural rhythms of Shakespeare's text are brought alive. Wringer captivates the audience as much as he captivates Desdemona, with his animated speech and his sensual physicality. As he grows more and more unhinged, his torment is played out in an exotic, unguarded and fluid physicality that stands in increasing contrast to the straight-backed rigid Edwardian Englishness of those around him. His body language tells us all the subtext we need: as he skips off to bed his wife for the first time; as he twitches and convulses with the growing agony of his jealousy.
Saskia Portway is just as triumphant as Desdemona. The extended bliss, followed by the protracted angst of this part, is always a challenge, but Portway's easy and sympathetic naturalism make light of this. That she is revelling in her marriage in the first half is clear; just as her final heartbreak moves to tears. No emotion is here skin deep: Portway lives every moment. There is an ease and grace to her delivery, which makes for an absorbing portrayal of a love affair and she creates a far more devastating portrayal of her rejection than might otherwise be achieved by a more traditional, two-dimensional characterisation. Her scene with Lucy Black's Emilia as they prepare Desdemona for what is to be her death bed is a memorable one. As Emilia helps unbutton her mistress, the history between these two and the strength of their friendship is clear. Lucy Black does well as a devoted servant and a burdened wife to Iago (Chris Donnelly): her fear of him is made increasingly evident in a series of subtle and underplayed exchanges, with Iago hissing lines for her ears only as Emilia flinches and breaks off eye contact. That she has long been victim of her husband's dark side is evident, and Lucy Black does justice to Emilia's courage in a moving final scene.
In the context of this naturalistic production, Donnelly's Iago has none of that overly-sinister melodrama that can make for a clogged and heavy-handed villain. In fact, his soliloquies play up the comic, bare-faced cheek of Iago's outrageous plottings and connivings. He even succeeds in winning the audience's sympathy to a degree: everyone loves a loveable rogue. It is only when he gives us glimpses of his mistreatment of his wife that we begin to see his rotten inner core emerge. In this way the tension and suspense is heightened.
This is a cast without weak link; Byron Mondahl's bumbling Roderigo, Paul Nicholson's care-worn Brabantio and Philip Buck's Cassio all particularly worthy of mention. A memorable production, deserving of the (partial) standing ovation and rumbling of stamping feet of press night. Allison Vale
The Mail on Sunday
February 18th 2007
* * * *
The play is the thing, refreshingly free from fancy directorial flourishes, at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol. Andrew Hilton’s spare, penetrating production of Othello, staged in the round with minimal props, lets Shakespeare do the work, and the play emerges as a compelling study of sexual jealousy and racism, filled with convincing characters.
Leo Wringer is possibly the finest Othello I’ve ever seen; a noble, charismatic, profoundly civilised and eloquent man. Indeed, this Othello has a magical way with words, which is one of the reasons Desdemona is bewitched by him. But he is also easily seduced by them, which makes him vulnerable to the brain-washing tactics of Chris Donnelly’s exceptionally plausible Iago. Georgina Brown
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Chris Donnelly as Iago. Photo: Alan Moore
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Lucy Black as Emilia. Photo: Alan Moore
