SOURCE: Duncan-Jones, Katherine. “Circling the Square.” Times Literary Supplement (14 May 1999): 13.

In the following excerpted review of the 1999 Royal Shakespeare Company staging of Othello directed by Michael Attenborough, Duncan-Jones praises the liveliness and clarity of the production, particularly the “assured and charismatic” performance of Ray Fearon as Othello.

The play [Othello] opens as a lively Jonsonian comedy, with the fascinatingly manipulative Iago running rings round the idiotic Roderigo (Aidan McArdle, something of a Roberto Benigni lookalike). As in a Jonson comedy, the audience are given no emotional option but to respond to the trickster's juicy cleverness. Then the play rapidly becomes a different kind of comedy: the kind in which, in the face of fierce parental opposition, a young couple in love are allowed to marry. This Othello is by no means “descended / into the vale of years”, and a few lines have had to be cut to accommodate...