Othello: An All-Female Production

“O these men, these men!” exclaims Desdemona mere scenes before her murder. Othello is, among other things, a play about women abused by men – disbelieved, insulted and finally killed. Except in Smooth Faced Gentlemen’s production, there are no men.

As delivered by an all-female cast, the line leaps out, underlining the masculine aggression of the play’s testosterone-soaked culture. On the whole, though, the single-sex casting quickly becomes unremarkable, more striking for its intervention in the male-dominated canon than for what it reveals about Shakespeare’s play.

Smooth Faced Gentlemen’s Othello is stripped back and streamlined, played with swift economy. At a brisk hour and 10 minutes, only the most necessary elements remain, keeping the narrative fairly intact but sometimes pruning back the characters a snip too far. The motivations of Iago and Othello alike are rushed as a result, Anita-Joy Uwajah’s Moor graduating with implausible speed from suspicion to anger to devastation.

Yaz Al-Shaater’s simple staging is as economic as the action. Scenes take place between and behind a series of venetian blinds, lightly hinting at the hidden and partly glimpsed. It’s all stylishly done, even if the plain clarity of Bex Kemp’s design feels slightly at odds with the more old-school Shakespearean acting of the eight-strong ensemble.

As a response to the continued lack of major roles for women, Smooth Faced Gentleman’s work makes a vital statement. As a fresh take on Othello, though, their production has little truly new to add.