Daily Telegraph
by Charles Spencer, 17 November 2004

Cheek by Jowl has been described by Time Magazine as one of the 10 great theatre companies in the world and it earns rave reviews both at home and abroad. It is usually my melancholy duty to enter a dissenting voice.

Yet my usual reservations were swept away by this knockout Othello. It is one of the most thrilling, emotionally shattering productions of the tragedy you are ever likely to witness.

As usual, Nick Ormerod's design is virtually non existent, consisting of nothing more than five wooden ammunition boxes that also serve as the fateful marriage bed when covered in rich draperies. Has a designer ever received so much acclaim for doing so little?

Donnellan's modern dress production, staged with the audiences seated on either side of an acting area that runs the whole impressive width of the Riverside auditorium, is also full of his trademark flourishes.

Those not required in a scene often remain on stage, frozen like statues, while it is taking place. In fights, an actor will thrust a dagger into thin air and someone standing at the other end of the stage will die as a consequence. The acting too, has its rough edges.

Yet somehow none of this matters. Donnellan and his company penetrate the heart of the play, capturing its thriller-like pace, psychological precision and edge of your seat dramatic intensity. I don't think I have ever seen the great last act more powerfully and movingly played.

Again and again Donnellan provides illuminating details that bring the play to life, the embarrassment of the other Venetian senators at the vile fold of Brabantio's bottled up racism, for instance, or the creepy solicitude with which Iago proffers a bucket for Cassio to be sick in after wrecking his career.

But at the heart of this production is the most plausible and touching account of the marriage of Othello and Desdemona I have ever seen, two loving, trusting innocents abroad in a wicked world.

Nonso Anozie's moor is a dignified giant of a man, slow to rouse, terrifying when he cracks and delivering the verse with superb feeling and clarity.

At first, as Iago so cunningly lures him toward the green eyed monster of jealously, I feared the actor was giving too restrained a performance. We expect our Othellos to tear a passion to tatters. But the result is that when anger, violence and despair suddenly break through his heroically maintained façade of calm, the effect is devastating.

Caroline Martin is a tiny, pitifully vulnerable Desdemona who barely reaches her husband's shoulder and cannot get her arms around his waist. There is a lovely warmth, mischief and open hearted sexuality about her and the scenes in which Othello first treats her like a cheap whore then strangles her as if she were a rag doll in his hands are almost too painful to watch.