As part of the ‘prose’ section of the Verona Theatre Festival, the Roman Theatre is hosting a production starring Lella Costa and directed by Gabriele Vacis, which reimagines William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy as a contemporary reflection on patriarchal violence, femicide and the manipulative use of language.
In this two-act production, the two artists have brought this text back to the stage 24 years after its first staging, finding it painfully relevant today, as Lella Costa herself describes:
This is what happens with the great playwrights, perhaps above all with Shakespeare: their texts, their stories, their characters are, quite literally, immortal.
…….
That is what inspired us so much that we decided to bring our Othello back to the stage after 24 years, preserving the narrative substance (Shakespeare) intact but intervening and modifying those parts where current events, or rather contemporary reality, required an update….
And if we add to that a riveting plot, the summary of which could read like a news story from today (a highly skilled foreign worker, a mixed marriage, a petty yet skilful manipulation, a malicious and unscrupulous use of language, a femicide followed by the perpetrator’s suicide), then we realise just how much we need to keep telling and listening to this story.
Precisely this one.
