Shakespeare’s Othello

The second performance of Lara Foot’s decolonial version of Shakespeare’s original, set in 1880s Namibia (which at the time was German Southwest Africa) and inviting the audiences to see the legacies of the brutal violence of colonisation.

It feels like an unmissable insight into contemporary southern Africa, the colonial experience generally, and maybe Shakespeare too. It probably wouldn’t work without a strong production team – costumes and the very clever set design by Gerhard Marx, music by Kyle Shepherd, lighting by Patrick Curtis, and a cast led by Atandwa Kani as Othello with Albert Pretorius (Iago) and Carla Smith (Desdemona).