Sher's hand is overplayed

No Shakespearian tragedy musters such narrative excitement or inexorable tension as Othello. And Gregory Doran's gripping, modern-dress production duly invests this tragedy of male sense and sensibility with high-wire dynamism. It is, though, the director's touch rather than Sello Maake ka-Ncube's original Othello or Sir Antony Sher's weird, misconceived Iago that works best. From the first thunderclap to the last laments of the Moor in Cyprus over the corpse of Desdemona, this production maintains the hurtling momentum of a dangerous sea at high tide.

Trevor Nunn gloriously interpreted Othello as a domestic but imperialist modern tragedy. Sam Mendes convincingly filtered the action through the perspectives of 1940s film noir. Doran's politically motivated production, in similar radical mould, rushes the action from a majestic, rain-drenched Venice where Clifford Rose's Edwardian Duke rules the roost to a mysterious, Islamic Cyprus of veiled women, chanting voices and Adrian Lee's eerie music. Sir Antony's moustachioed, peakcapped Iago, resembling Hitler and as likely to inspire Othello's confidence as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, chills the atmosphere.

Stephen Brimson Lewis's memorable set, with a framework of rusting, corrugated iron and a wire fence, vividly suggests a decaying end of empire location, a military stockade behind which Othello and his men retreat. Amanda Harris's fine, chainsmoking Emilia, with a Rita Hayworth hairstyle watches over Lisa Dillon's touchingly childlike Desdemona. The fighting and the boozing that help Iago set the Moor on destruction's road are managed with tremendous eruptions of male violence and wildness.

Soweto-born ka-Ncube's initial air of stiff, ponderous self-regard suits Othello like a badge of office, though a tendency to pause at all line-ends makes this Moor seem laboured. Sher's Iago gleefully manipulates Justin Avoth's oddly detached Cassio, Mark Lockyer's impressively distraught Roderigo and the well-placed handkerchief to do their destructive work. But ka-Ncube occupies jealousy's rack too easily. He bids farewell to greatness and suffers the idea of Desdemona's adultery as if anguish and fury were outside his range. Only in the murderous finale, with the purposeful, dazed calm of a ritual-prone sleepwalker, does this Othello catch fire.

The production, though, is unbalanced by Sir Antony whose versatility and flair has shrivelled into the cul-de-sac of mannerism. His preposterously sinister Iago melodramatises a malcontent role that works by concealing rather than signalling the character's strange evil as Sher crudely does. Voice a nasal monotonic rasp, vowels elongated, strutting manner redolent of a general rather than a lowly ensign, Sher keeps snatching the emotional limelight from Othello as if determined to convert the play into Iago, The Crazed Revenger.

Until 3 April. Information: 0870 609 1110.

The Complete Works Festival: Othello (Muncher Kammerspiele)