No Shakespearean play is more moving or offers a more modern x-ray of contemporary political tensions.

A general from outside Venice - enlisted as a child soldier at the age of seven - now leads a Christian naval force in what appears to be a fully assimilated and enlightened racial environment. Until his sexuality crosses a boundary that stirs latent hatreds and xenophobic fears of the ‘other’. Venice, a city resting precariously on its own watery grave, and Cyprus, a frontier surrounded by enemies and a hostile ocean, are the battlefields upon which family, love, community, trust, ambition, and jealousy are put on the severest trial.

Relentless, dark, and even darkly funny, Othello disturbs in us the very real thoughts we don’t dare to share, even to think, and the very real things people do to each other.

Image credit: Seiya Taguchi