David Harewood: Return to Othello

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1:09Welcome to the documentary In the Studio from the BBC World Service. I'm Julian May at the stage door of the Theatre Royal Haymarket, one of the most beautiful and impressive playhouses in the West End, London's Theatre District. When you hear this programme, a new production of Shakespeare's tragedy Othello would just have opened. It will run until the middle of January next year. Othello is Shakespeare's only play in which the main character is a person of colour. David Harewood, Hollywood star of Homeland and Blood Diamond, is Othello. He was the first black actor to play the role at Britain's National Theatre back in 1979.

1:53I'm obviously familiar with the sort of emotional map of the play, but what I'm finding now is one always has to go back to the text. Caitlin Fitzgerald, who was in succession, is Desdemona, Othello's young white wife. Theatre is like a marathon, and you have to be like a Jedi about your nutrition and your sleep and all that boring self-care stuff, because otherwise you just can't sustain it. Toby Jones plays Iago, who brings about Othello's downfall. We decided that he felt profoundly snubbed. That was going to be the motor of his revenge. Jones played Mr Bates in the television drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office.

2:42It had such an impact, the government made new laws to clear the victims and compensate them. and it made Toby Jones one of the country's best-loved actors. The director is Tom Morris, who won a Tony Award for the theatre show War Horse that has been seen by more than 8 million people around the globe. That's quite a line-up. There's a buzz about this Othello. Shall we run the transition just per stage for journeys while we're waiting for life? I've been following the making of the show for In Studio, and the company has kindly allowed me into their technical rehearsal. But you himself, or any of my brothers at the state, cannot but feel this wrong, it's where they're on.

3:30This is when the cast and crew leave the rehearsal room and get onto the stage with the real set in costumes and then work through all the light, sound and movement cues. The tech, as it's known, can go on for days.

3:48So I'm making my escape to ask Sarah Hemming, the theatre critic for the Financial Times, about this play.

3:59Othello is a devastating story. Shakespeare often wrote about jealousy and the damage that it can do. and in this case he tells the story of a North African general in the Venetian army who is respected and highly successful but still feels like something of an outsider and he has married Desdemona, beautiful daughter of a Venetian senator and the two adore one another but they have gone against the will of her father in getting together so there are some frailties there and then when Iago one of Othello's men is overlooked for a promotion he decides to exploit that and he exploits Othello's trust and persuades him that Desdemona is unfaithful.

4:52We never really understand exactly what drives Iago but what he does is deeply, deeply destructive and it has terrible consequences. So it's an incredibly moving play and the things that Shakespeare talks about so love, vulnerability, prejudice masculinity and jealousy they are still every bit as live now as they were 400 years ago. One of the things I love most regardless of whether I played it before is going back to the material and going, what are we talking about? What do we mean? Let's all get on the same page. Before we sort of leap up onto our feet, let's just be clear about what we're saying.

5:38And what's wonderful about Tom's process, what I can gather so far, everyone's lobbing in ideas. Everyone's sort of, oh, I think it's this, and it could be that, and it could be this. And so there's this sort of collective unpeeling of this piece of work. For me as an actor, it's a really exciting part of the process. David Harewood, playing Othello for the third time in his career. We've gone back in time, two months from the tech, and I'm interrupting David and director Tom Morris' lunch break on the second day of rehearsals. It's probably worth saying we did a thing, which I do whenever I can on any project, a stand-up read-through.

6:15So rather than being around a table, everyone's in a circle facing inwards. If you're on stage, you stand up and read your lines so you can see who else is there. And of course, what happened is people started walking around and playing the scenes. Lots of the scenes then became incredibly emotional because of that, which obviously sets quite a high bar now. Tom, is there a particular reason why you want to do this play now? Of course you want to do a big Shakespeare play with a wonderful cast and PJ Harvey doing the music and everything, but is it speaking to our condition now? The ways in which Iago talks about women.

7:03We've just been reading a scene in which there's a sort of subtextual quarrel between Iago and Cassio about what is the appropriate language to use about Desdemona. Desdemona isn't even there. and essentially the way in which Iago is objectifying the women in the play and the way in which Othello is kind of drawn into that language and mentality. Oh, beware my lord of jealousy. No, Iago. I'll see before I doubt. Everyone knows it's a play about jealousy, but the kind of mechanics of jealousy to do with unseeing a person and describing that person in a way that objectifies them. The gender politics of the play that come from that feel frighteningly alive now.

8:00The racial politics in the play everyone knows about. I mean, there is a fair amount of racism, racist language, and actually Tom cuts quite a bit of it. I actually lobbied to put some back in. Because I think it's important that his otherness is a factor. As it is today. I think the Supreme Court yesterday in America legitimised racism. They literally said, if you're black or brown, ICE has every legal right to stop you, pull you over, question you, what are you doing here, ask to see your papers. If I was going to America, I would only go there for work. But that would give me no protection whatsoever.

8:40And I think there's an element of those racial politics at work in the play. You'll have your daughter covered with a barbary horse. What profane rachel are there? I am one, sir. They come to tell you now, your daughter and the moor are now making the beast with two backs. Go on again. But the gender politics are just as powerful in the story. Well, that's also what I realised yesterday. After he's done the deed, there's this wail. but his realisation of what he's done. It's really painful. Pain is something I really recognised in our reading yesterday. Just how painful this is to be corrupted like that.

9:24When you're dealing with that, again, we're at the very early stage, when you're dealing with a story that has such pain in it and such violence in it, you have to ask yourself, why are we lifting the lid on this? And for me, I think it's because the mechanisms are recognizable in our own world. Shakespeare didn't know about social media or any of that kind of stuff, but he knew about language. And he's given us this tragedy of the collapse of a dream, the collapse of a relationship which is really profoundly respectful. We think that's our hunch on day two. I saw that. When you're reading with Caitlin, there's a kind of joy that comes out.

10:13And we just have this playfulness together, which is beautiful. And the idea that that becomes corrupted by misinformation and disinformation, which we're all familiar with today. The play is the ultimate act of misinformation and disinformation. I am not what I am. In what they call the green room, where the actors relax before they go in to work, there's a model of the set of Othello. It looks as if you're looking into a picture. There's a gold, ornate frame around the stage. And then on the stage itself, there are three arched doorways, also in gold frames, but there are no doors. so it gives you the idea that you're in a formal place, maybe a palace and that there are a series of rooms but actually you can see right through everything to the back of the stage and above there's something like the pattern you get on an ornate plastered ceiling but there is no ceiling so you have this idea of formality but you can see through everything Thank you for joining online Thank you to everyone in the room, and thank you, the world.

11:34Three weeks have passed. David Harewood, director Tom Morris, and the cast of Othello have been working all day, all week, digging into the play, which was written between 1602 and 1604, and discovering how it speaks to us today. And I've been invited to a production meeting. This involves everyone except the actors. The people making the set, the props, the costumes, the people looking after the money, they all come together to report on the progress of the great caravan of the production. Fabric maker has all been sorted, so we're moving on with that. Yes, so everyone's doing very well. We've now looked at everything in the play.

12:18We are in shape to have a run-through of everything by the back end of next week. Lots of things are still up in the air, but it's quite exciting. Very, very good fight call today with David and Caitlin for the murder scene. There are no windows in the rehearsal room. The company is creating the world of the play, cut off from the world outside. But theatre is made for the world outside, for society today.

12:52in the uk recently there have been protests at hotels where asylum seekers are accommodated this whole flag thing to some people it's patriotic to others it's extremely threatening in some places now lampposts are decked with the english flag and the union jack any person who grew up in the 70s like i did who was chased remorselessly by skinheads who all had Union Jacks draped over them. For me, personally, it's a difficult thing to see that because it invokes trauma and there's nothing I can do about that. I'm not being unpatriotic. It's just a traumatic thing that sits in me from the age of five years old.

13:33And at Charing Cross Police Station, just a few minutes walk from the Theatre Royal, some officers have been suspended, accused of racism, misogyny and violence, and two of them have been sacked. The producers of Othello are sensitive to the impact that all this and the content of the play itself might have on the cast. One of the people at the production meeting is Samantha Adams in charge of wellbeing. I'm really delighted with the way that wellbeing is being held in the room but also in mind and body of everyone in the room. The creatives and myself and stage management have an awareness which isn't a concern but should be kept in mind about the real life themes particularly with regards to Charing Cross Police Station systemic racism and misogyny and when those two things come together there's often a kind of heightened sensitivity which we should all keep in mind otherwise I think, yeah, it's going really well This is the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service.

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16:29When next I visit the Othello rehearsal room I sit in the corner and watch an early run of the climax of the play no costumes nor proper set the fight moves still cautious but even so very powerful At one point, Othello hits his wife. It's shocking. No one comes to her aid. This, you feel, will not end well. Desdemona, played by Caitlin Fitzgerald, is puzzled but brave. Vanette Robinson's Amelia, Desdemona's servant and friend, stands up for her against not just Othello, but her husband, Iago. these women emerge as important figures in the drama in a break Caitlin and Vinette tell me what they've discovered about the characters they're creating it is a play with two incredible male leads but the women in it are key and I think we were both really keen not just to make them plot points but to make their stories a real focus of the play Yeah, indeed.

17:39And I was sort of shocked as I started to work on the play and very dutifully read a lot of scholarship and essays and how little the domestic violence, the murder of these two women is mentioned. And if it is, it's a plot point to move the action along for the male heroic journeys. And I'm so glad we're not doing that. And the sort of first thing I said to Tom when I met him was, I'm not interested in a Desdemona who's kind of virginal and virtuous and meek and he said great. The play is all about dishonest Iago who's forever called honest and Desdemona Othello thinks in the end is a strumpet but you're absolutely honest and brave in your love for this black man in a very white society.

18:29I think it's in the text I think she's been wildly misread. We meet her and she's defying her father and the social moors to marry with Othello and she's asking the duke to let her go to war with her husband. None of these things are done and she's incredibly articulate. She has a tremendous amount of legal language in the play. I think she has the mind of a lawyer. She's really smart and she's really sure of what she wants. I I don't think we're doing anything too egregious. Another thing that Tom wanted to be clear about is that it's in a world similar, not the same as, but similar to our own, in that people of colour can advance, but that does not mean they are not subject to prejudice.

19:15So the racial dynamics are hopefully as complicated as our own. And Amelia is an amazingly brave person as well, towards the end of the play. you're the person who speaks truth to power really there and I think you realize what might be the consequence of that is that a line perchance I'll ne 'er go home have I got that right yeah perchance I'll go I will ne 'er go home I think at that point the truth is the most important thing and whatever the consequences are she is willing to meet them that doesn't mean she wants to die but she knows it's a possibility having seen what's happened to the woman that she's become incredibly close to she just can no longer be complicit in the systems that have allowed it because she is complicit she keeps the lid on her suspicions until she gets to a point where she cannot.

20:12Oh these men, these men. Do you know all your words now? You're completely off the book and everything? Caitlin. I really thought so and then today had one of those terrible terrible moments where suddenly I wasn't sure who I was, what play we were doing or what I was meant to be saying. Because you can learn your lines in isolation at home as soon as you get the piece on its feet as soon as you change a thought or a motivation then the lines you once knew can elude you yeah but indeed and another thing that I noticed involving you both actually in that rehearsal was how technical it all is I mean where you have to move the fight the death quite harrowing to watch good that's what we're going for I sometimes wonder whether joy in an actor's life lies.

21:07Getting some work for one thing. But is it the performing or in the work in rehearsal leading to performance? I asked Toby Jones about this. He plays Iago, the damned villain who poisons Othello's mind with jealousy. I happen to believe that rehearsing a play is as happy a place as an actor can be because unlike a musician, you know, with music or I'm like a painter with a sketchbook. Rehearsal is where you realise that your sketchbook is sort of 24 hours a day for the rest of your life. You're constantly picking up on behaviour. That's what you do. You intuit how people lead their lives and you feed your imagination doing that.

21:52And the only place you get to disgorge that is in rehearsing a play. You certainly don't get that kind of rehearsal on film or television. So when I'm in a rehearsal room for a play, it sort of makes sense of the rest of my life about what on earth it is I'm watching and trying to figure out most of the time. Toby, I've heard actors say that no matter how villainous the character you're playing you have to have some sympathy for them. Is that not really difficult with Iago? I haven't really even thought about having sympathy for him. I think I've only thought about how do I advance his interests, which I suppose is a kind of empathy, putting myself in his shoes.

22:39And what have you learned in the few weeks that you've been rehearsing? The more sincerely that I can play his game, the more fun it is to play. he's an expert actor and it's acting as life or death so in a way it's an ultimate role for an actor isn't it because you're acting someone acting in a situation which is one of life and death death mostly it's a fantastic challenge to try and persuade the audience of his sincerity when he's revealed very early in the play that he is not what he is. He tells one of the people he ends up killing that he is not what he is. Much of the humour in the play, I think, is the audience both enjoying that deception but also themselves almost momentarily being fooled by it as well.

23:45For when my outward action doth demonstrate the native act and figure of my heart in compliment extern. Tis not long after, but I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for doors to peck at. I am not what I am. I have just watched the end of the play and it's very striking that Iago, he speaks a lot in the play to other people and also you have those amazing soliloquies, don't you? but at the very end he says he's not going to say say anymore what you know you know from this time forth I never will speak word he's not going to say anything again even though he's going to be tortured have you worked out why that is the first thing he says to Rodrigo the first thing he says in the play on the first page is you will not hear me and in a way the play Maybe Fabiago is a search for agency and a search for...

24:50He's been snubbed and he's going to find a voice for himself, which he does in a malevolent, cruel and vicious way. And it ends with his failure insofar as he's going to die and he withdraws. He chooses in his own agency to withdraw participation verbally in the play. So there's that. But there is also a withdrawal from the audience as well. I think Iago has implicated them by their enjoyment of his malevolence in what has gone on. And at the end, he withdraws explanation. And that feels quite deliberate to me, that Shakespeare doesn't sort of give him a final heroic speech in a way that he does, Othello.

25:37What you know, you know. Yeah, yeah, makes sense of it. Thou dost stone my heart. Kill me tomorrow. Let me live tonight. I'm with David Harewood, who's playing Othello, in the rehearsal room. Nine days before the show goes before the public. I know from the little bit of acting that I've done in my life that by this point everything seems insurmountable and exhausting. So I'm wondering, David, how you're feeling today. In terms of the show, very confident. I'm enjoying this time around far more than I did 30 years ago when I did it at the National. My whole perspective on the park is completely different.

26:20That being said, I think I came down with something at the weekend, so I'm pretty exhausted. Oh, right, yeah, because it's October in England and everyone gets a cold. Yeah. What is actually different for you this time? I think it's embracing my own personal vulnerabilities, which is something I've done through my life experience. Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable and realising your failings and accepting them. I think I've perhaps been able to transfer a little bit of that to the character and reveal how vulnerable and frustrated and corrupted he becomes and sort of using that insecurity as a way into the violence.

27:00As a younger man I was very quick to anger. I was very angry at the idea of somebody having an affair whereas this time the idea sort of makes him crumble. It's the pain of that, the sense of loss, sense of betrayal and I'm really using more colour in the emotion, more of a sense of insecurity and vulnerability which causes the anger as opposed to just pure anger, full-on anger from the very first moment of the second half and I think that benefits the play. because the play is actually a tender love story it goes wrong, is it not? Exactly, and he never stops loving her that's something I didn't really understand I think as a young man the sort of mind trick of the play is that even though he still finds her attractive still loves her there's also this undercurrent of loathing and jealousy and hatred which of course leads to violence Move the table further up stage I'm back in the Theatre Royal in London's West End where the technical rehearsal of Othello goes on and on.

28:10Toby Jones as Iago scurries about in military fatigues. David Harewood, Othello, is resplendent in an electric blue suit with a military sash. The senators are in full-length scarlet robes. It all looks wonderful. But what is really extraordinary is that working together over the last six weeks, Tom Morris, David Harewood, Caitlin Fitzgerald and Toby Jones and the whole company have made new discoveries about Shakespeare's characters that are relevant to our 21st century lives and that, as the critic said at the beginning, Othello is as powerful today as it was 400 years ago.

28:59You've been listening to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service, presented and produced by me, Julian May.

29:14We focus on the part of the internet that most people don't know about. It's called the dark web. undercover in the furthest corners of the dark web. US special agents are on a mission to locate and rescue children from abuse. Move in now. From the BBC World Service, World of Secrets, the darkest web follows their shocking investigations. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.