The woman is mine: A new production of Othello

Although jealousy is an emotion has inspired a great many memorable tales since, Shakespeare’s Othello is still at the head of the pack, its tragic title character having gone down in history as the epitome of the green-eyed monster.

But theatre Antwerp director Mokhalled Rasem puts the focus elsewhere in his modern reworking of the famous story. Rasem worked at the National Theatre of Iraq producing classic drama before the war drove him to Europe.

“In Iraq, I ran away from reality. Here, it is appealing to me,” he told us last February when premiering his performance/installation Body Revolution, about the marks war and violence leave on the body.

It’s a possible explanation for why his Shakespeare adaptations as a resident director at Toneelhuis – Romeo and Juliette and Hamlet – are not terribly faithful to the original script. Othello, too, brings the issues of the past squarely into the present.

Music plays a prominent role: Jacques Brel, Nina Simone and the Malinese singer Rokia Traore. And the line-up is limited to a strict minimum: general Othello, performed by Roy Aernouts, his beautiful fiancé Desdemona, played by Julia Ghysels, and his reserve officer Iago, Filip Jordens.

Where Body Revolution focused on the anxiety of people who survived the Iraq war, stressing the importance of the body in our daily lives, Othello tackles another important (physical) issue in the Arab world: A woman must be a virgin when she marries.

“This principle is based on a certain ideal of female beauty and purity,” says Rasem. “It has to do with the man’s possessiveness, his desire for exclusivity: The woman is mine alone, nobody else will touch her.”

Until 11 April in Antwerp, Leuven & Ghent

photo by Kurt Van der Elst