One could argue there is no greater compliment to be paid to the production of a play than for it to revise your view of the work for the better; for it to both reinvent the play and deliver an epiphany of understanding is both rare and precious. Othello, Shakespeare's tragic tale of deception and jealousy, had for me (up to this performance) been a play with much to admire, but also much that was troubling.

However adept Iago was, Othello's gullibility never quite convinced, as directors have never seemed able to present us with any alternative Othello to the man-god stereotype, or to go beyond chiseled cheekbones and toned physique. They never seemed aware of the extent of the suspension of disbelief needed to accept that this invincible warrior, leader of men, defender of kingdoms, impregnable in battle, could so swiftly be felled by the green-eyed monster that Iago magically manifests from Othello's emotional insecurity. How could this Nietzschean 'ubermensch' become so fatally entrapped by the kryptonite of Iago's web of deceit, however deftly and deadly the spinner's hand? It has now become apparent my problem lay not with the original play, but with the play's history of stereotypical productions that always seem afraid to deviate from the established characterisation.

All that is now banished, thanks to Cyril Niri's subtly nuanced, revelatory performance as the Moor in the recent production at The Old Rep. From his opening lines he embodies Othello with a capricious fragility. The hairline cracks that slowly evolve into mental fissures on the Moor's battle-scarred psyche are both subtle and sublime. He convinces us with quicksilver mood swings, thus: at one moment we see him grinning like a lottery winner on helium, then a split second later we have a rapacious mercenary, all too keen to do his master's bidding, knowing that his place in and value to Venice is only as a warrior and that those masters are concerned only with defeating the Turk, not for his wedding night, or his deteriorating mental state.

Neal Foster is perfect as Iago, the malevolent sociopath who joyously boasts to the audience while the delicious poison of his lies insidiously infects Othello. He is a convincing, charismatic chameleon, conspiring with the hapless Rodrigo, befriending the naive Michael Cassio, charming the virginal Desdemona, and, not least, convincing Othello of his (Iago's) undying loyalty as a brother in arms who would lay down his life for him. Iago must be a role that every actor relishes, for the chance to galvanise such a monstrous rhetorical puppeteer of the psyche.