Shakespeare’s Othello

A much acclaimed version of Shakespeare’s original, adapted for Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre Centre by director Lara Foot. Other reworkings of Othello have riffed on the notion of the outsider (and a victim of racism) who will always be looked down on by the likes of Brabantio and the Duke; Lara Foot takes it beyond the individual to speak specifically to the violence of genocidal colonialisation, setting it 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.

To make the point she has staged the play in several languages, isiXhosa and Afrikaans as well as English; and Shakespeare’s Duke has become Otto von Bismarck, discussing with his officers how to slice up Africa.

This 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).

The performance on 9 October will be followed by a Q&A with Lara Foot and the creative team, moderated by Shamoon Zamir, NYUAD Professor of Literature and Art History.