Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Theatre
November 21, 2014

We are at a wedding reception. It smacks of a hurried affair, and smells like a disquieting mix of secrecy, rebellion and desperation. Lou Rawls’ You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine plays as a disco ball sparkles, leading the eye, bower-bird style, to the happy couple. The song is prophetic, although the couple don’t yet know it.

Our first meeting of Desdemona (Ashton Malcolm) and Othello (Hazem Shammas) is surely Director Nescha Jelk’s intriguing intention to throw us, just a little. She is taller than he, dressed in Doc Martins and a racer-back sundress, and suggestive of a blonde Megan-Washington-meets-80’s-Madonna. He is handsome, hirsute, and utterly besotted. Dancing and kissing, they are drunk with love if nothing else. Wordlessly, they impart a wealth of information. We are almost dared to start judging.

For a play with a healthy dose of power-lust, this opening brilliantly leads the charge of the impending catastrophe. William Shakespeare’s masterwork is off to a cracking start, and we haven’t even met Iago yet.

Brabantio (Chris Pitman) appears from slumber in t-shirt and boxers, brandishing a 3-wood. It is inspired direction, and his anxiety is solidly projected as is a Centaur...