The production of Shakespeare’s Othello at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, starring David Harewood (Othello), Toby Jones (Iago), and Caitlin FitzGerald (Desdemona), was a strained and lifeless experience. Instead of taking the audience into the deep, painful psychological drama of the tragedy, the staging was loud and shallow, ultimately missing the core meaning of the play. The evening was seriously hurt by three main problems:
Toby Jones’s Iago was so clearly a villain from the start (with his constant “stooping and bobbling” body language) that his successful manipulation of a savvy military general seemed impossible to believe.
David Harewood’s Othello shouted his lines and seemed emotionally shut off.
Caitlin FitzGerald’s Desdemona, with her casual American style, failed to convey the delicate, profound quality of the central love story, making her seem more like Othello’s buddy than his beloved.
Overall, the performance felt fundamentally disconnected from the brilliant text, like a forced, boring read-through in an English class rather than a powerful, cathartic night at the theatre.
Just Reading the Lines: The Classroom Effect
The most pervasive issue undermining the Tom Morris production was a profound lack of genuine engagement with the text’s inherent dramatic architecture. The overall presentation suffered from a palpable air of superficiality, mirroring the detached experience of an initial, compulsory reading exercise. The actors appeared to be encountering the material for the first time, delivering the lines with the rote, unassimilated cadence characteristic of a high school English Literature class where students are forced to take turns reading Shakespeare aloud. The performance possessed the same level of emotional distance and absence of deep interpretative experience one associates with simply decoding verse rather than embodying character.
Toby Jones’s Iago: Obvious Villainy
The antagonist, Iago, as played by Toby Jones, was rendered thin and uncomplicated. He was established as an irredeemably obvious scoundrel from his initial appearance, his malevolence perpetually telegraphed by a constant, stooping and bobbling physical posture that instantly undermined any claim to trustworthiness or subtlety.
This Iago was so patently deceitful that it rendered his success in masterfully manipulating a seasoned and judicious military general utterly implausible. His demeanor suggested a low-stakes operator—one more suited to minor street-level transgression, such as dealing illicit substances or taking a clandestine sporting wager—than a sophisticated architect of existential, psychological ruin. The complex malignancy that defines Iago was sacrificed entirely for a pantomime villain.
David Harewood’s Othello: Too Much Yelling
The performance of Othello by David Harewood lacked skill and subtlety. The actor kept having fits of shouting, using sheer loudness to try and replace the character’s deeper emotions. What the acting missed in careful character development, it tried to make up for with non-stop volume, delivered with an aggressive force that sometimes felt out of place—you almost expected him to yell “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fam” before some of his big speeches.
This approach reached a symbolic low point during Othello’s most devastating moment of despair, where he falls to his knees upon hearing the supposed evidence of Desdemona’s betrayal. The audible sound of plastic—a sound strongly suggesting protective kneepads—became a potent metaphor for the entire performance. Whether or not the actor was wearing protective gear, the moment felt emblematic of the dramatic effort: the performer seemed to be going through the motions with his emotional protective gear on, shielded from the true depth of the character’s pain.
Caitlin FitzGerald’s Desdemona: Buddy Over Beloved
The portrayal of Desdemona by Caitlin FitzGerald introduced a jarring dissonance that significantly undermined the credibility of the central love story. Her delivery and actions had a distinct casual American tone (which some noted also featured a weird Irish stylizing) making her appear less like the elevated, delicate object of Othello’s deep, romantic ideal of feminine perfection, and more like his laid-back friend or casual partner.
This “buddy” feeling, evident in every shared gesture between the couple, completely stripped the main commitment of its necessary passion and vulnerability. Consequently, Othello’s subsequent huge outburst of jealousy felt abstract and dramatically unearned. This casting and character choice transformed the tragedy from an inevitable, devastating collapse over a sacred, irreplaceable bond into something as simple as a misunderstanding between friends.
Set’s Simplistic Visuals: Projections as Plot Cartoons
The production’s design choices further contributed to the overall lack of subtlety, particularly the use of background projections. When Othello is confronted with the devastating news regarding his beloved, the set displayed large projections of stereotypical images of Othello and Desdemona spinning and holding hands. This crude visual choice conveyed key plot points with the sophistication of a cartoon; rather than allowing the psychological terror to unfold through the actors’ performances and the depth of the text, the stage literally spelled out the emotional chaos for the audience. This kind of heavy-handed visual aid treated the audience—and the tragedy itself—as if it were a simple, flat narrative, insulting the intelligence of the viewer and distracting from the intense personal collapse that should have been happening center stage.
Conclusion
Compared to defining performances by great actors, this staging of Othello at the Theatre Royal Haymarket felt weak and forgettable. It is a production that chooses loudness and surface anger over real psychological depth, resulting in a performance that is ultimately safeguarded and emotionally empty. The lack of true emotional risk ensures that the tragedy, which should tear at the soul, merely thunders across the stage.
For those seeking a deeper dive into villainy this holiday—a fix of Machiavellian manipulation that outclasses anything found in the political headlines—I suggest returning to the raw dramatic power of the 1981 BBC version, featuring Sir Anthony Hopkins.
Watch a clip of his intensely wrought final moments here: