My Shakespeare

Episode
Othello
Broadcast Info
2014 (45 mins)
Description
In 1997, David Harewood was the first ever black actor to play Othello on stage at the National Theatre in London. In this episode, he unravels the complex issues of prejudice and jealousy which are threaded throughout the play, as well as returning to the National to meet the most recent actor to take on the role at the theatre, Adrian Lester.
"What they seemed to object, to was that he was what they called a ‘genuine nigger’"
David Harewood was, astonishingly, the first black actor to play, the great Moorish/Venetian General, Othello, on the stage of the National Theatre in England, when he triumphantly took on the role in 19??. Now he returns to the play to discover how the prejudices of different centuries have changed our views.
He finds out about the Moorish Ambassador who visited the court of Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare’s day and may well have inspired Shakespeare. Certainly Shakespeare’s view of this character was complex and he was more concerned with the sense of "otherness" than he was with his colour. David goes on to meet the National Theatre’s latest Othello, Adrian Lester and he discovers that Adrian has also starred in a play about Ira Aldridge, the 19th Century American Actor who was the first black man to play the role at all. he London revues of this Othello make shameful reading - hence their comment above!
David watches many different Othello’s including the notorious blacked-up Laurence Olivier version from the 1960s
Othello is a play not dominated by race - but by love and by a great "villain" - Iago. A Forensic Psychiatrist from Broadmoor analyses this extraordinary psychopath and how he manipulates our hero by persuading him that his new young wife is having an affair with a friend and colleague. David meets Simon Russel Beale who played Iago to his own Othello and then re-examine the lethal relationship.
Imogen Stubbs, who played the role of Desdemona, the young and innocent wife in Trevor Nunn’ film of the play, revisits the role and Sir Ian Mckellan who played Iago in that same film talks about the malignant character of the man. Actors at the Globe Theatre rehearse some of the most famous scenes and discover how Iago insinuates himself into the mind of Othello
Finally, driven insane by the "virus" that is Iago, Othello kills his wife Desdemona. And then realising the truth of how he had been manipulated - he kills himself. This is one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies that reveals how the "green eyed monster**" of jealousy (**Shakespeare’s own description of it in this play) can lay waste to everything it touches
Genre
Literature; Writing

How to cite this record

The Open University, "My Shakespeare". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/85997 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)