Readers will remember the Q Brothers from last fall’s smash hit, I <3 Juliet, written and directed while the Q Brothers were in residency at Connecticut College. A Chicago-based theater group, the Q Brothers have carved out their own theatrical niche by combining the plays of William Shakespeare with the music and lyricism of modern hip-hop. Othello: The Remix, their hip-hop reworking of the Shakespeare tragedy, has come to London, the latest stop on its world tour. What with rapping Moors, dancing villains and 1980s pop culture references, this is Othello like you’ve never seen it, and it’s extraordinary.
The show had its premiere at last year’s Globe to Globe festival, a celebration of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven canonical plays performed in thirty-seven different languages. (Othello represented the language of American hip-hop.) It has since been revamped to its current iteration and toured to various locales, from a one-stop show in South Korea to a performance in Illinois’ Cook County Jail.
What makes Othello so effective is its balance of devotion to and deviation from the original source material. Although streamlined to about seventy-five minutes, Othello manages to squeeze in all the plot, characterization and drama of the Shakespeare original, while offering new ideas as well.
Take for example the show’s characterization of Othello, reimagined here as a rags-to-riches rapper, searching for the next big artist to open for him. (His choice is Cassio, in case you were curious.) As Othello, actor Postel Pringle conveys his character’s evolution from trusting and playful to paranoid and murderous, all the while imbuing the role with a bit of hip-hop flair.
His villainous counterpart, Iago, played fantastically by Q Brother GQ, manages to maintain all the malice and venom of his Shakespearean counterpart, while finding a level of fun it in all. Two of the stronger musical numbers in the show, both performed by Iago, “Why I Hate The Moor” and “The Puppet Master,” showcase Othello’s ability to meld the original drama with the fun of hip-hop. The audience simultaneously wants to despise Iago for his actions, and sing and dance along to his catchy raps.
Othello: The Remix showcases another trademark of the Q Brothers: the cast size. As they do with all their shows, the team truncates and doubles the many characters of the play, giving them to just a handful of performers. In this case, it’s just four. What I find incredible are the actors’ abilities to dive into each and every character with equal devotion.
Jackson Doran doubles as the smooth-talking rapper Cassio and Iago’s doting wife, Emilia. Doran’s Cassio is a joy to watch, balancing confidence with buffoonery. His ‘Cassio slide’ is one of the funnier musical moments in the show. On the other hand, his Emilia is a sex-obsessed and lonely housewife who wants nothing more than her husband’s attention. Instead of letting Emilia fall completely into spoof, Doran grounds her in genuine emotion, which is highlighted in her eleven-o’clock number, in which she bemoans that “it’s a man’s world.”
It would be impossible to talk about this production without crediting the wonderful music and beats created in large part by JQ, who acts principally as the dweebish Roderigo in Othello. The show is underscored almost entirely by music, making it more of a rap opera than a rap musical. JQ suits the beats to every moment, elevating both the music and the material. The show’s music quotes and references come from other hip-hop songs, but as Othello and the other Q Brothers’ collaborations have shown, JQ’s style is something all his own, combining the sound of hip-hop with the theatricality of Shakespeare, and with the structure of musical theatre.
Othello: The Remix exemplifies what a theatrical event can be, allowing the audience to think and enjoy themselves simultaneously. The amount of storytelling, comedy and emotional content present in this show is baffling, but it works to great effect. Othello: The Remix is a stellar example of the heights to which Shakespeare can soar in a modern context. As the show’s tagline proclaims, “Good storytellers borrow, great ones steal.”
Andrew Marco is a staff writer for the College Voice, currently abroad studying Shakespeare in London.
