When I heard that the comedian Lenny Henry was to play Othello it struck me as a cynically opportunistic piece of casting.
Henry is a palpably decent and amiable man, and a genuinely beloved public figure. But, to be frank, he has never struck me as much of a comedian, let alone an actor, and his dramatic experience in the theatre extends only to panto and youthful appearances with the Black and White Minstrels in summer season.
How on earth then was he going to cope with Othello, one of the most challenging roles in dramatic literature, which demands a combination of superb verse speaking and lashings of raw, racked emotion?
Frankly, I was expecting to review a theatrical car crash. What a pleasure then to report that Henry truly triumphed last night.
From his entrance, there is no mistaking his sheer stage presence and impressive bearing. But he delivers the verse with compelling clarity and dignity too, and his love for Desdemona in the early scenes is touchingly manifest as she leaps joyfully into his arms.
Ah, I thought, but how will he cope with the gnawing jealousy, the emotional and physical violence, the character's long dark night of the soul as the evil Iago poisons his mind and persuades his deluded victim to kill the thing he loves?
Well he does that superbly too. His resonant baritone voice becomes increasingly anguished, his movement ever more agitated. He cuts a genuinely fearsome figure, not least when he growls and roars like an injured lion. What's more, a performer who has always struck me as embarrassingly desperate for an audience's affection and approval brings out the sheer viciousness of his dealings with Desdemona, when he physically abuses her and treats her like a whore.
The fact that he is such a big, powerful man, and his Desdemona, heart-wrenchingly played by Jessica Harris, is so tiny, young, naïve and vulnerable make these scenes almost too painful to watch. And then, in the magnificent last, Henry delivers some of the greatest poetry Shakespeare ever wrote with clarity and depth of feeling and reaches the heart of a terrible sense of tragic loss.
This is one of the most astonishing debuts in Shakespeare I have ever seen. It is impossible to praise too highly Henry's courage in taking on so demanding and exposed a role, and then performing it with such authority and feeling.
Full marks too to Barrie Rutter, boss of the Northern Broadsides company, for such a risky piece of casting, and for directing a fast-moving production that features a host of strong performances, most notably from Conrad Nelson as a particularly vile and reptilian Iago.
But the laurels undoubtedly belong to Henry.
Telegraph rating: ****
