As it moves closer to the opening of Stratford Festival’s 2021 season, the North American mecca of Shakespearean theatre is continuing to connect with their audiences through a weekly free livestream of productions contained in their STRATFEST@HOME catalogue. Fans get to vote between three different titles that fall under some banner of similarity across the Bard’s repertoire, and that show is streamed live from their YouTube channel. This past week saw the company’s 2019 production of Othello, a gripping and poignantly relevant take on the legendary tale of machinations.

Directed for stage by Nigel Shawn Williams and film by Barry Avrich, the most immediate choice evident of this production is a thoroughly modern setting for their Venice. With costuming that mixes very sleek and sharp formal style with timely military garb, as well as a series of ambient soundscapes that combine with elements of trip-hop and electronica, the original world of these character’s is supplanted expertly. It takes the action of this ever-tense play and frames it in very accessible trappings.

Michael Blake smoulders as the titular paragon of stoicism, Othello. The confident gravity he exudes is a weighty balance to the chaotic world that revolves around him, and against the racist paranoia, hatred, and jealousy lobbed at him by other men throughout, this stoicism is a bittersweet display of grace for issues that still plague the world over. Blake and Amelia Sargisson show off an enviable love and devotion as Othello and Desdemona, enchanted and fully smitten with one another as they navigate their new marriage with one another. Sarigsson beams with a headstrong loyalty and optimism that holds so much more depth than the self-professed “obedience” the character brings up.

Gordon S. Miller as Iago. Photography by David Hou.

And it is these wonderfully touching qualities brought to the characters that make their downfall at the schemes of Iago all the more brutal. Gordon S. Miller’s Iago is frightening, to say the least, and so much of that palpable dread that encapsulates him comes from Miller’s precision of speech and thought. Switching from conniving calculations to pleasant advising in the same breath, steeping in his own hatred towards the successful “Moor of Venice”, there are definite connections to draw between this interpretation and today’s alt-right. Iago’s sociopathic demeanour feels as fitting for a Silicone Valley billionaire as it does for any snake-like villain.

The players and production choices are all splendid and are intimately captured in close-ups that convey aspects that couldn’t be picked up on in the same way in-room. Every piece works towards the unified goal of this steadily churning machine of foul-play.

But one particular piece stands out among the rest.

The projection design for Stratford’s Othello is magnificently effective. With a set comprised of little more than blank, black geometric structures, this obsidian canvas is shrouded in chalky etchings of ornate Venetian line work via the projector. This alone is visually impressive and is becoming a mainstay in set and light design. But the fluidity with which these textures merge and meld, blow away as dust, flare into lightning and rain, and encircle the bodies in space is, for all intents and purposes, hypnotizing. Most strikingly, the light and projection work creates a transcendent state for the soliloquies of Iago, dragging us into his mind’s vitriolic and brilliant conspiracies. If the world revolves around Othello, the audience revolves around Iago.

Stratford’s Othello does what the best modern Shakespeare productions do—it takes the action of an iconic work and highlights just what makes it timeless. The exploration of issues that still pervade political and social sphere, as well as a display of all-too-amicable and all-too-familiar evil, make this production of the classic tragedy feel all to relevant. And as long as there are still messages to learn from the Bard’s works, there will still be reason to dive into beautiful productions like this.

During the past ten years, Frank Bowling has finally enjoyed the recognition he deserves. Bowling, now 87, received his first retrospective at Tate Britain in 2019 and was Knighted by the Queen on her Birthday Honours List less than a year later.

While Bowling’s ascent was a long time coming, he was signed to Hauser & Wirth less than a year ago. The transatlantic gallery was quick to organize shows featuring his works and recently opened its New York and London outposts, marking the Bowling’s inaugural exhibitions. With works ranging from 1967 to 2020, ‘Frank Bowling – London / New York’ captures how one artist’s inventive approach to the physicality of paint pushed abstraction to its limits and made him one of the leading abstractionists alive today.

As the exhibition title suggests, the simultaneous shows follow Bowling’s life and career between the UK and the US over the course of half a century. Born in Guyana (then British Guiana) in 1934, the artist arrived in London in 1953 and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1962, along with artists like David Hockney, R.B. Kitaj and Allen Jones.

Frank Bowling, Mirror, 1964–66.

While he maintained studios in both cities, London and New York, his modern contemporaries saw great acclaim in Britain. Bowling, for reasons unknown, but certainly unrelated to the merit of his work, never saw mainstream success at that time, which many now consider to be one of the greatest artistic oversights in the past century.

The exhibitions span Bowling’s early engagement with expressive figuration and pop art, all the way to his signature blend of poetry and abstraction that continues to inform his output today. Visible in his works are the influences of the English landscape painting styles of Gainsborough, Turner and Constable. Most visible is 1960’s New York and Abstract Expressionism which Bowling engaged with in the forms of bright colours and gestural improvisation.

Interestingly, Bowling would frequently start a painting in one city and finish it in the other, making his works a hybrid fusion of cities, cultures and environments. In his words, ‘I would just roll the lot up and move. And I knew that when I got to the other end, I could roll them out again and continue to work.’ Bowling’s command of light, colour, and geometry was greatly influenced by the two great bodies of water in his life: The Thames in London and the East River in New York, near to which he maintained his studios.

’Frank Bowling – London / New York’, until 30 July 2021, Hauser & Wirth New York; until 31 July 2021 Hauser & Wirth London. hauserwirth.com