January 15, 2013 - Telegraph.co.uk - Adrian Lester (MYROR) wins Best Actor Award for Red Velvet by Critics Circle

Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabarti are husband and wife winners at Critics' Circle theatre Awards

Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabarti both won awards for the play Red Velvet at this year's Critics' Circle Theatre Awards.

Adrian Lester as Ira Aldridge in Red Velvet at the Tricycle Theatre. Photo: Alastair Muir

By Daisy Bowie-Sell

1:11PM GMT 15 Jan 2013

Comment

Adrian Lester, who also played Mickey Bricks in the BBC TV series Hustle, won the Best Actor award for his performance in the new play Red Velvet, which was performed at the Tricycle last year.

The play, which charts the story of Ira Aldridge – Britain's first black actor of note, who worked in the 19th century – was written by Lester's wife Lolita Chakrabarti, who has also been awarded Most Promising Playwright.

The two were both nominated for an Evening Standard Theatre Award this year for the same play, but Lester lost out to Simon Russell Beale.

Speaking at the awards, Lester said: "It puts a very nice bookend on a joint adventure. For us both to come today, from the same house, in the same car, [because of] the script that we've been so involved in for so many years to pick up an award at this prestigious ceremony is very very nice."

The husband and wife team have two children and Lester said that working on the play together was hard: "It was a logistical nightmare: getting both children to separate schools and then getting up to rehearsals and then getting [the children] back from whoever was looking after them and then getting the homework done. But it was how life should be for a couple working hard."

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Red Velvet premiered to excellent reviews in October, with the Telegraph's theatre critic Charles Spencer giving the play four stars and saying Chakrabarti brought 'this fascinating story to vivid life'.
Although Russell Beale did not win Best Actor, he was given the award for Best Shakespearean Performance in Timon of Athens, which played at the National Theatre.
Hattie Morahan, who was also recognised at this year's Evening Standard Theatre Awards, was awarded Best Actress in A Doll's House at the Young Vic. The Young Vic Theatre had a hand in several of the awards given today, including Best Director – Benedict Andrews for Three Sisters at the theatre – and Best Designer – Miriam Buether for Wild Swans, also at the Young Vic.
_{Hattie Morahan in A Doll's House}
Lucy Prebble's new play The Effect, which is currently playing at the National Theatre and starring Billie Piper, was given the award for Best New Play.
The Critics' Circle Awards are voted for by a panel of professional theatre critics, who decide the winners based on their personal preferences. This is the Critic's Circle's centenary.

The full list of winners:
Best New Play:
The Effect by Lucy Prebble
Cottesloe Theatre at the National, London, in a co-production with Headlong
Award presented to Lucy Prebble by Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard

The Peter Hepple Award for Best Musical (new or revival):
Merrily We Roll Along
Menier Chocolate Factory, London
Award presented to David Babani (Artistic Director, Menier Chocolate Factory) & Maria Friedman by Kate Bassett, Independent on Sunday

Best Actor:
Adrian Lester in Red Velvet
Tricycle Theatre, London
Award presented to Adrian Lester by Michael Billington, The Guardian

Best Actress:
Hattie Morahan in A Doll’s House
Young Vic Theatre, London followed by a revival from 2nd April 2013.
Award presented to Hattie Morahan by Heather Neill, freelance

The John and Wendy Trewin Award for Best Shakespearean Performance:
Simon Russell Beale in Timon of Athens
Olivier Theatre at the National, London
Award presented to Simon Russell Beale by Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

Best Director:
Benedict Andrews for Three Sisters
Young Vic Theatre, London
Award presented to David Lan (Artistic Director, Young Vic Theatre) by Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out

Best Designer:
Miriam Buether for Wild Swans
Young Vic Theatre, London, in a co-production with American Repertory Theater & Actors Touring Company
Award presented to Miriam Buether by Simon Edge, Daily Express

Most Promising Playwright:
Lolita Chakrabarti for Red Velvet
Tricycle Theatre, London
Award presented to Lolita Chakrabarti by Jane Edwardes, Sunday Times

The Jack Tinker Award for Most Promising Newcomer (other than a playwright):
Denise Gough for Desire Under the Elms
Lyric Hammersmith, London
Award presented to Denise Gough by Susannah Clapp, The Observer

Special Award
Shakespeare’s Globe for Globe to Globe
Award presented to Dominic Dromgoole (Artistic Director, Shakespeare’s Globe) & Tom Bird (Executive Producer, Shakespeare’s Globe & Festival Director, Globe to Globe) by Matt Wolf, International Herald Tribune

March 10, 2014 - Telegraph.co.uk - Adrian Lester (MYROR)'s Othello nominated for 2014 Olivier Award - Best Revival

Olivier Awards 2014: Shakespeare's heroes and villains do battle in best actor category

Olivier Award nominations for Tom Hiddleston and Jude Law demonstrate the enduring appeal of Shakespeare, while women dominate the best director category

Jude Law as Henry V Photo: Johan Persson

By Anita Singh, Showbusiness Editor

12:11PM GMT 10 Mar 2014

11 Comments

Jude Law, Tom Hiddleston and Rory Kinnear will vie for the best actor prize at this year’s Olivier Awards in a battle of Shakespeare’s great heroes and villains.

The trio have been nominated for their performances on the West End stage last year.

Law played the title role in Henry V at the Noel Coward Theatre, while Hiddleston had the starring role in Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse. Kinnear played Iago in Othello at the National Theatre, opposite Adrian Lester.

The sell-out productions were hailed as evidence that we are living through a new golden age of Shakespeare, although the starry casting was also a factor - Hiddleston was besieged by adoring fans each night as he left the theatre, and a security guard was posted at the stage door to marshal excitable females.

The fourth contender in the best actor category is Henry Goodman for The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Bertold Brecht’s satire based on the rise of Adolf Hitler. And Goodman could beat the Shakespearean actors to the prize - the veteran performer won the best actor Olivier in 2000 for his role in The Merchant of Venice, and in 1993 for his role in the musical Assassins.

 

In the best actress category, the nominees are Hayley Atwell for The Pride, Anna Chancellor for Private Lives, Dame Judi Dench for Peter and Alice, and Lesley Manville for Ghosts.
Women dominate the best director category, with Maria Friedman (Merrily We Roll Along), Susan Stroman (The Scottsboro Boys) and Lyndsey Turner (Chimerica) competing with Richard Eyre for his staging of Ghosts.
The Almeida Theatre in Islington has 10 nominations for various productions, among them the West End transfers of Ghosts and Chimerica.
But it is musicals that lead the way, with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along scoring seven apiece.
There are six nominations each for The Book of Mormon, The Scottsboro Boys and Once. The Audience Award, chosen by the public, will go to either Matilda The Musical, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera or Wicked.
The Olivier Awards ceremony will take place at the Royal Opera House on April 13, and broadcast later that evening on ITV.
COMMENT: Shakespeare: Britain's cutting-edge playwright

Full List of Nominations

BEST ACTOR
Henry Goodman - The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui (Duchess Theatre)
Tom Hiddleston - Coriolanus ( Donmar Warehouse)
Rory Kinnear - Othello (National Theatre)
Jude Law – Henry V (Noel Coward Theatre)

BEST ACTRESS
Hayley Atwell - The Pride (Trafalgar Studios)
Anna Chancellor - Private Lives (Gielgud Theatre)
Judi Dench - Peter And Alice (Noel Coward Theatre)
Lesley Manville - Ghosts (Almeida Theatre & Trafalgar Studios)

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Ron Cook - Henry V (Noel Coward Theatre)
Mark Gatiss - Coriolanus (Donmar Warehouse)
Jack Lowden - Ghosts (Almeida Theatre & Trafalgar Studios)
Ardal O’Hanlon - The Weir ( Donmar Warehouse & the Wyndham’s Theatre)

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Sharon D Clarke - The Amen Corner ( National Theatre)
Sarah Greene - The Cripple Of Inishmaan (Noël Coward Theatre)
Katherine Kingsley - A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Noël Coward Theatre)
Cecilia Noble -The Amen Corner (National Theatre)

AMERICAN AIRLINES BEST NEW PLAY
1984 (Almeida Theatre)
Chimerica (Almeida Theatre & Harold Pinter Theatre)
The Night Alive (Donmar Warehouse)
Peter And Alice (Noël Coward Theatre)

BEST NEW COMEDY
The Duck House (Vaudeville Theatre)
The Full Monty (Noël Coward Theatre)
Jeeves & Wooster In Perfect Nonsense (Duke of York’s Theatre)
The Same Deep Water As Me (Donmar Warehouse)

BEST DIRECTOR
Richard Eyre - Ghosts (Almeida Theatre & Trafalgar Studios)
Maria Friedman - Merrily We Roll Along (Harold Pinter Theatre)
Susan Stroman - The Scottsboro Boys (Young Vic)
Lyndsey Turner - Chimerica (Almeida Theatre & Harold Pinter Theatre)

BEST ACTOR IN A MUSICAL
Gavin Creel - The Book Of Mormon (Prince of Wales Theatre)
Jared Gertner - The Book Of Mormon (Prince of Wales Theatre)
Douglas Hodge - Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (Theatre Royal Drury Lane)
Kyle Scatliffe - The Scottsboro Boys (Young Vic)

BEST ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
Rosalie Craig - The Light Princess (National Theatre)
Zrinka Cvitešić - Once (Phoenix Theatre)
Jenna Russell - Merrily We Roll Along (Harold Pinter Theatre)
Charlotte Wakefield - The Sound Of Music (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre)

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MUSICAL
Stephen Ashfield - The Book Of Mormon (Prince of Wales Theatre)
Colman Domingo - The Scottsboro Boys (Young Vic)
Josefina Gabrielle - Merrily We Roll Along (Harold Pinter Theatre)
Nigel Planer - Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (Theatre Royal Drury Lane)

MASTERCARD BEST NEW MUSICAL
The Book Of Mormon (Prince of Wales Theatre)
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (Theatre Royal Drury Lane)
Once (Phoenix Theatre)
The Scottsboro Boys (Young Vic)

BEST REVIVAL
The Amen Corner (National Theatre)
Ghosts (Almeida Theatre & Trafalgar Studios)
Othello (National Theatre)
Private Lives (Gielgud Theatre)

BEST MUSICAL REVIVAL
Merrily We Roll Along (Harold Pinter Theatre)
The Sound Of Music (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre)
Tell Me On A Sunday (St James Theatre & the Duchess Theatre)

BEST THEATRE CHOREOGRAPHER
Peter Darling - Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (Theatre Royal Drury Lane)
Steven Hoggett - Once (Phoenix Theatre)
Casey Nicholaw - The Book Of Mormon (Prince of Wales Theatre)
Susan Stroman - The Scottsboro Boys (Young Vic)

BEST ENTERTAINMENT AND FAMILY
Derren Brown: Infamous (Palace Theatre)
Eric And Little Ern (Vaudeville Theatre)
Barry Humphries’ Farewell Tour - Eat, Pray, Laugh! (London Palladium)
The Wind In The Willows (Duchess Theatre)

AUTOGRAPH SOUND AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC
The Book Of Mormon – Trey Parker, Robert Lopez & Matt Stone for book, music & lyrics
Merrily We Roll Along – The orchestra
Once – Martin Lowe for composition & arrangements, Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová for music & lyrics
The Scottsboro Boys – John Kander & Fred Ebb for music & lyrics

WHITE LIGHT AWARD FOR BEST LIGHTING DESIGN
Paule Constable - The Light Princess (National Theatre)
Tim Lutkin & Finn Ross - Chimerica (Almeida Theatre & Harold Pinter Theatre)
Peter Mumford - Ghosts (Almeida Theatre & Trafalgar Studios)
Paul Pyant - Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (Theatre Royal Drury Lane)

BEST SOUND DESIGN
Simon Baker - The Light Princess (National Theatre)
Carolyn Downing - Chimerica (Almeida Theatre & Harold Pinter Theatre)
Clive Goodwin - Once (Phoenix Theatre)
Gareth Owen - Merrily We Roll Along (Harold Pinter Theatre)

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Nicky Gillibrand - The Wind In The Willows (Duchess Theatre)
Soutra Gilmour - Merrily We Roll Along (Harold Pinter Theatre)
Rae Smith - The Light Princess (National Theatre)
Mark Thompson - Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (Theatre Royal Drury Lane)

XL VIDEO AWARD FOR BEST SET DESIGN
Bob Crowley - Once (Phoenix Theatre)
Es Devlin - Chimerica (Almeida Theatre & Harold Pinter Theatre)
Tim Goodchild - Strangers On A Train (Gielgud Theatre)
Mark Thompson - Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (Theatre Royal Drury Lane)

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN AN AFFILIATE THEATRE
Cush Jumbo - Josephine And I (Bush Theatre)
Fleabag (Soho Theatre)
Handbagged (Tricycle Theatre)
Oh What A Lovely War (Theatre Royal Stratford East)

BEST NEW DANCE PRODUCTION
Compagnie 111 Aurélien Bory/Stéphanie
Fuster for What’s Become Of You? (Questcequetudeviens?) (Barbican Theatre)
Eastman - Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui & Sadler’s Wells for Puz/zle at Sadler’s Wells
Richard Alston Dance Company/Britten Sinfonia for Barbican Britten: Phaedra at the Barbican

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN DANCE
Arthur Pita for his choreography of Ballet Black - A Dream Within A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House
Clemmie Sveaas for her performance in Witch-Hunt at the Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House
The Mark Morris Season at Sadler’s Wells
Michael Hulls for his body of lighting work including Ballet Boyz – The Talent at Sadler’s Wells

BEST NEW OPERA PRODUCTION
The Firework-Maker’s Daughter at the Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House
Les Vĕpres Siciliennes at the Royal Opera House
Wozzeck by English National Opera at the London Coliseum

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN OPERA
Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez for their performances in La Donna Del Lago at the Royal Opera House
Plácido Domingo for his performance in Nabucco at the Royal Opera House
English Touring Opera for its brave and challenging touring productions at the Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House

BBC RADIO 2 AUDIENCE AWARD
Les Misérables (Queen’s Theatre)
Matilda The Musical (Cambridge Theatre)
The Phantom Of The Opera (Her Majesty’s Theatre)
Wicked (Apollo Victoria Theatre)

COMMENT: Shakespeare: Britain's cutting-edge playwright

April 24, 2013 - Telegraph.co.uk - Adrian Lester (MYROR) stars in National Theatre's revival of OTHELLO review

Othello, National Theatre, review

This Othello, at the National Theatre, has all the hallmarks of Hytner at his best, writes Charles Spencer.

5

Olivia Vinall as Desdemona, Adrian Lester as Othello at the National Theatre Photo: Alastair Muir

By Charles Spencer, Theatre critic

7:00AM BST 24 Apr 2013

9 Comments

Ten years ago, when he arrived at the NT, Nicholas Hytner staged a bang-on-the money, modern-dress Henry V with clear reference to the war in Iraq. It starred Adrian Lester in the title role and now they are reunited in another of Shakespeare’s military dramas, Othello.

It’s a gripping production of a tragedy that is also an intensely painful psychological thriller, and though the production lasts more than three hours, it never loosens its dramatic hold.

This Othello has all the hallmarks of Hytner at his best – it’s witty, agile, lucid and deeply felt. The director passionately believes that Shakespeare is our contemporary, and the action moves from a recognisable modern London of pubs, blaring pop music and an emergency Cabinet meeting to a British military base in Cyprus, a grim redoubt of reinforced concrete, orange sodium streetlights and cheerless accommodation. Some will baulk at this, but the staging makes Shakespeare seem both fresh and accessible and the delivery of the often knotty language is superb.

Any production of Othello stands or falls with the actors playing Othello and Iago, and the double-act between Lester’s Moor and Rory Kinnear’s Iago proves exceptional. In the early scenes Lester is a man at ease with himself, exuding a charisma that puts one in mind of Barack Obama. He doesn’t rise to the racist calumnies of Desdemona’s anguished father Brabantio, and responds with both eloquence and humour.

But his confidence is not as certain as it seems and he is a poor judge of character. Having fought alongside Iago he trusts him implicitly, and fails to understand that his ensign might feel miffed at his lack of promotion.

 

I have always thought that those who cannot understand Iago’s so called “motiveless malignity” haven’t knocked around in the world enough. He is the kind of cynic who cannot see goodness and love without wanting to smear and despoil it. Kinnear captures this superbly.
He’s the bluff, plain-spoken bloke who seems like your best mate in a drinking session but actually delights in the spectacle of your drunken humiliation. With his pint and his ciggie, Kinnear’s Iago initially seems like the salt of the earth, but you soon sense a resentment that lurches into paranoia. He isn’t an evil genius, just a man who has learnt to exploit the weakness of others.
The scenes in which Iago winds up Othello to a jealousy that trips over into epileptic fits and mental derangement are hideously compelling. Kinnear appears to be improvising his evil on the hoof, with the most memorable encounter taking place in the army camp lavatories where Othello spews up in a cubicle as his faith in his wife collapses. It is an appropriate choice of location for Iago, a man only really at home in a moral sewer.
Lester rises magnificently to the challenge of the great poetry of the final act, conjuring a verbal symphony of loss,pain, guilt and grief, while Olivia Vinall, in her T-shirt and lavender knickers is almost unbearably poignant as Desdemona, a little girl lost in a world where innocence cannot survive.
My word, we will miss Hytner when he leaves the NT in 2015.
Currently booking until Aug 17, but more performances are scheduled. Tickets: 020 452 3000; nationaltheatre.org.uk. The production will be shown in cirnemas as part of National Theatre Live on Sept 26.
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December 22, 2013 - Telegraph-co.uk - Adrian Lester (MYROR)'s Othello named one of best plays of 2013

 

Theatre: the best and worst of 2013

The five best and worst theatre productions of 2013, chosen by Charles Spencer

Rory Kinnear as Iago and Adrian Lester as Othello in the National Theatre's stunning production of Othello 

By Charles Spencer

10:00AM GMT 22 Dec 2013

2 Comments

1 Othello, National Theatre

^{Olivia Vinall as Desdemona, Adrian Lester as Othello at the National Theatre Photo: Alastair Muir}

The latest in Nicholas Hytner’s Shakespeare productions, with outstanding performances from Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear.

Read Charles Spencer's review

2 The Weir, Donmar Warehouse

^{Ardal O'Hanlon in The Weir at the Donmar Warehouse Photo: Helen Warner}
Conor McPherson’s haunting play is a modern classic. Josie Rourke directed a deeply felt production.
Read Charles Spencer's review
3 The Sound of Music, Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park

^{Moving: the von Trapp family in The Sound of Music at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park Photo: Alastair Muir}
Often mocked but secretly loved by most, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s show received a touching al fresco production.
Read Charles Spencer's review
4 Ghosts, Almeida

^{Ghosts: Lesley Manville as Helene Alving and Jack Lowden as Oswald Alving. Photo: Alastair Muir}
Richard Eyre directed a moving production of Ibsen’s dark drama. Lesley Manville is my actress of the year as the guilt-haunted Mrs Alving.
Read Charles Spencer's review
5 Chimerica, Almeida, West End

^{Cracking: Stephen Campbell Moore as Joe, Sean Gilder as Mel, in 'Chimerica'}
This ambitious play by Lucy Kirkwood was the best of the year – funny, sad and heart-stoppingly tense. Thrillingly directed by Lyndsey Turner.
Read Charles Spencer's review
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And the worst of 2013...
1 Hamlet, RSC

^{Jonathan Slinger as Hamlet Photo: Alastair Muir}
Jonathan Slinger’s sarky, sneery performance sold Hamlet desperately short.
Read Charles Spencer's review
2 The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas, Royal Court

Preachy moral fable by Dennis Kelly, ploddingly directed by Vicky Featherstone, the Royal Court’s new artistic director.
Read Charles Spencer's review
3 Gastronauts, Royal Court

^{Andy Clark and Imogen Doel in the Royal Court's Gastronauts Photo: Johan Persson}
Another stinker at the Court, combining unfunny sketches about food with a terrible meal that made this member of the audience physically gag. Featherstone needs to raise her game.
Read Charles Spencer's review
4 Nut, National Theatre

^{Nadine Marshall in Debbie Tucker Green's 'Nut'}
The National doesn’t always get it right. This play about inner-city deprivation by debbie tucker green was a whining, self-indulgent stinker.
Read Charles Spencer's review
5 Much Ado About Nothing, Old Vic

^{James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave in Mark Rylance's Much Ado About Nothing Photo: Alastair Muir}
James Earl Jones (82) and Vanessa Redgrave (76) were wheeled out to play Beatrice and Benedick. One admired their pluck but it was dismal.
Read Charles Spencer's review

 

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April 16, 2013 - Telegraph.co.uk - Adrian Lester (MYROR) Interview on National Theatre's Othello

Adrian Lester interview: Othello: 'It’s not just about his colour’

Ahead of his starring role in 'Othello’ at the National Theatre, Adrian Lester tells Jasper Rees why this production is barely concerned with ethnicity.

On Othello’s descent, Adrian Lester says: 'I have come into rehearsal and thought, I don’t know if I can do that again’  Photo: Rii Schroer

By Jasper Rees

3:50PM BST 16 Apr 2013

11 Comments

The long monotone of a bell from inside the National Theatre is blaring insistently out across the Thames when I arrive to interview Adrian Lester. Hundreds of employees – from artistic director knight to the humblest usher – muster on the riverbank, waiting for the nod from fire officers to go back to work.

Well might alarums sound. Earlier in the day, Sir Nicholas Hytner announced he would be leaving the building for good after a tenure consisting mostly of triumph.

Hytner is celebrating his tenth anniversary at the NT much as he marked his entry: by directing Lester as one of Shakespeare’s martial heroes. Back in 2003 it was Henry V, timed to perfection as Western armies piled into the Iraqi desert. Now it’s Othello.

The role has been a while in the brewing. Lester was first offered the part by Sam Mendes in 1997 after they had a hit together with Sondheim’s Company, only to pull out at the eleventh hour when he was offered a major Hollywood role by Mike Nichols in Primary Colors.

“Sam wasn’t happy,” says Lester. “He shouldn’t have been and wasn’t. It was a very tricky situation. I was in a massive dilemma but it was just something you can’t say no to.”

 

No wonder that he and Hytner, who have long since pledged that they would do Othello together, have bided their time until the planets were in alignment. That moment happens to be precisely 10 years to the month since Henry V opened.
When I interviewed Lester for the Telegraph as he was about to play Henry V, he seemed a counter-intuitive choice, having made his name in softer roles consistent with the puppyish contours of his face – notably Bobby in Company, Rosalind in Cheek by Jowl’s all-male As You Like It. But then the clenched ferocity of his boy warrior took the breath away, above all in his St Crispin’s Day speech, delivered from the bonnet of a jeep.
Could he feel his spine tingle every time he incanted “Men are now abed who hold their manhoods cheap” to 1,200 people as England went back to war?
“It wasn’t the power. There was a real adrenalin of knowing I’ve got it right. The words are bigger than me. It’s your ability to get out of the way. If you climb all over it, people don’t get the meaning, they just get you, and when I got it right in Henry V it was amazing to see old faces with glassy eyes looking back at me.”
Lester at 44 barely looks a week older. He’s trim and tall and softly spoken. The change, if there is one, is to do with an aura of confidence, even entitlement. He was Hytner’s King Hal, also Peter Brook’s Hamlet and has since become a major TV star thanks to the scam-dram Hustle.
To top it off, in the most recent New Year’s Honours List he was awarded an OBE. “That was a real shock. I got the letter and I thought, 'What! What are they giving me an OBE for? I ain’t gone to university.’ ”
That is of course precisely the point. Lester has had to drag himself to where he is now by force of will as well as talent. The son of Jamaican immigrants, he left his school in Edgbaston at 16 because they didn’t encourage interest in the arts and performance. He had to introduce himself to Shakespeare by reading. At 18 he got into Rada and there for the first time encountered Othello. It didn’t reveal its secrets straight off the bat.
“I didn’t understand why Othello believed Iago, why he killed Desdemona. And at the time white actors were still blacking up. This is a mindset that a lot of actors of my generation got into before the rules changed. I wouldn’t be here if the practice still continued.”
While waiting for his turn, he has watched others have a go, including his NT replacement David Harewood, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lennie Henry, Nonso Anozie and (on screen) Laurence Fishburne. As for the other Laurence, Olivier’s stage performance captured on film, he’s “seen bits of it. That’s about all I could watch. He’s doing a very generalised parody. It’s colour as character, not just colour as colour. And there is this insulting idea – and it goes back years – that because the dots of why Othello believes the things that he does can’t be joined, people go, 'Well it’s about colour.’ ”
This Othello, set like all Hytner’s Shakespeares in the present day, barely concerns itself with ethnicity. “There was more fuss made about Colin Powell being made general in America,” Lester argues, “than there is about Othello being a general in the play. He doesn’t kill his wife because he’s black, he isn’t jealous because he’s black. So you take that off that preoccupation, the tragedies of Othello and Desdemona and Iago live a little more because they have their own colour, and not the one colour we’ve washed the play with for so many flipping years.”
Lester knows whereof he speaks more than most. A few years ago at Brighton Festival he participated in a reading about an African-American actor called Ira Aldridge, who in 1833 took over from Edmund Kean in Othello at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden. “I thought, God, I’ve never heard of this guy. And the story fascinated my wife as soon as I brought it home.”
Last year, what started out as a screenplay and became a play that many theatres politely turned down – the play Red Velvet by Lester’s wife Lolita Chakrabarti – opened at the Tricycle Theatre with Lester in the lead role. At the Critic’s Circle awards, their partnership won her most promising playwright and him best actor, and he reports that the play may well make a return. Was imagining Aldridge’s Othello any kind of dry run?
“It was a real lesson in how to deliver the height of emotion, the height of poetry, and yet make it believable. It’s something that you absolutely cannot mumble and shrug and modernise your way through.”
Declamatory 19th-century acting is one thing. For the first time rehearsing Shakespeare, Lester hit a roadblock when looking for the truth in the orotund verse that is so seductive to Brabantio’s teenage daughter.
“I could feel the iambic. And it felt very odd. I found myself stuck. When you take on a character you try and lose yourself into it because you want to be less self-conscious. Othello somehow presents himself, and I thought, there’s a clue there. And I realised I’m playing someone who is self-conscious. And once I accepted that, it started to get easier.”
Easier. But not easy. Othello’s descent from general to murderous jealousy and eventual self-immolation “is one of the hardest things I’ve done. It feels like I pick at a wound that’s healing to make it fresh. I truly have come into rehearsal each day and thought, 'I don’t know if I can do that again’.”

'Othello’ is in previews now and opens at the National Theatre (020 7452 3000; nationaltheatre.org.uk) on Apr 23

April 26, 2013 - Telegraph.co.uk - Adrian Lester (MYROR) steals show in National Theatre's Othello

Othello, at National Theatre

Adrian Lester steals the show as an achingly human Othello in Nicholas Hytner’s production, says Tim Walker.

4

Olivia Vinall as Desdemona, Adrian Lester as Othello at the National Theatre Photo: Alastair Muir

By Tim Walker

7:00AM BST 26 Apr 2013

Comment

There are few, if any, actors who are better at communicating youthful idealism than Adrian Lester. The engaging Brummie, who played Jack Stanton’s campaign director in the film Primary Colors, may now be 44 and sporting a few grey hairs, but he remains irredeemably boyish. He seems, on the face of it, an almost perverse choice to play the title role in Othello.

When the actor steps out on to the stage – slim, sharp-suited, correct and with a manner that seems almost eager to please – he is certainly the very antithesis of Laurence Olivier’s celebrated Moor: predatory, panther-like, sensual and an emphatically masculine leader of men, who is all too familiar with the world and its wicked ways.

If Lester does not grab the audience manfully by the throat in the opening scenes, then nor do his fellow players in Sir Nicholas Hytner’s production, which is played out against a backdrop of prosaic modern settings: the outside of a pub, a boardroom, even a lavatory.

There are a lot of irksome theatrical clichés: apart from the suits, Othello’s soldiers are in contemporary military uniform – the sort of gear that would not have looked out of place in the Gulf Wars – and there are the all but inevitable sounds of distant helicopter rotor blades.

 

The vast stage of the Olivier Theatre cries out, of course, for a widescreen treatment of this epic tale, but Vicki Mortimer, the designer, opts instead to confine the action to a succession of small, claustrophobic sets. Frankly, it is a production that seems for the first hour or so to be going out of its way to annoy.
In his first scenes, Rory Kinnear’s Iago, the devious ensign in Othello’s employ, comes across as the sort of blokey, affable clown that the actor’s late father Roy used to make a speciality. Olivia Vinall’s Desdemona, with her great mane of blonde hair and tight jeans, looks, meanwhile, like a provincial disco bunny, and Jonathan Bailey is an improbably glamorous and superficial Cassio.
Still, with more than three hours to play with, Sir Nicholas knows that he can afford to etch out the characters in Shakespeare’s tragedy at his own pace, and in time the tale stealthily begins to exert a hold.
Kinnear shows more of the “green-eyed monster” within and his desire to wreak vengeance upon the hapless Othello for having the temerity to promote Cassio over him.
A lot of it is done with a look – the odd, unsettling lapse in his studied bonhomie – and with a dangerous tone in his voice, when he says how much he “hates” the Moor. In his later scenes with Lester, Kinnear makes the all-powerful Othello look more and more like a lamb heading towards its inevitable slaughter. The chemistry between the two actors is intriguing: there is a complicated struggle for supremacy between them that recalls James Fox and Dirk Bogarde in The Servant.
Sir Nicholas’s use of utilitarian settings, rather off-putting at first, starts to pay off as it places the attention firmly on the players. The scene in which Othello, hiding behind the door of a lavatory cubicle, listens as Iago prompts Cassio into giving the impression that he’s having an affair with Desdemona, proves peculiarly effective. Lester’s look of injured pride gives way to a terrifying fury.
Bailey’s Cassio – far too fond of himself to start with – reveals a vulnerable, hopeless side towards the end, as he sees the tragedy unfold. Lyndsey Marshal is on very strong form, too, as Emilia, Iago’s wife, a woman who is struggling to make her way in a man’s world.
It is in what looks like a Portakabin, of all places, that Othello finally murders Desdemona and then himself, but I have never felt so emotionally involved in the scene before. The skimpy nightdress that Vinall wears makes her character seems all the more vulnerable: the bare flesh that she exposes as she struggles with her assailant makes the crushing out of her life all the more unbearable to witness.
This is a play where Iago can all too easily steal the honours from Othello, but it is, however, Lester who ultimately wins this monumental battle for supremacy between two great actors at the top of their game.
His is the most human Othello that I have ever seen, and the production is all the more powerful and affecting because of that.
One actually shed a tear for the old brute when, finally seeing the error of his ways, he takes his own life and dies “upon a kiss”.
To Sep 26; nationaltheatre.org.uk
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February 1, 2014 - Telegraph.co.uk - Adrian Lester (MYROR) - stars in Tricycle Theatre's Red Velvet play

Red Velvet, Tricycle Theatre, review

Adrian Lester returns to the Tricycle Theatre in his wife's play Red Velvet ahead of the show's Broadway transfer, says Tim Walker

5

Affecting: Adrian Lester in 'Red Velvet', directed by Indhu Rubasingham at the Tricycle Theatre 

By Tim Walker

8:00AM GMT 01 Feb 2014

Comment

I wonder if all real love affairs don’t begin with laughter. That is certainly how mine began with the Tricycle Theatre last year. The National had cancelled a first night after the indisposition of an actor, and, accordingly, I had no choice but to trudge through the rain on a cold, dark night to this rather unprepossessing little venue in Kilburn, north London.

My sense of resentment at having to review a second-choice production did not, however, last long. Handbagged, Moira Buffini’s take on the Queen’s relationship with Margaret Thatcher, turned out to be an astoundingly classy and knowing affair. The members of the cast threw themselves at it with such infectious enthusiasm that they soon had me crying tears of mirth. I still smile at the memory of one young actor – Neet Mohan – playing both Neil Kinnock and Nancy Reagan with absolute conviction.

I predicted a swift West End transfer for the show, and now it has come to pass, with the announcement that it is to open at the Vaudeville in the Spring. Another Tricycle production, Red Velvet, meanwhile, has returned to its old home for a couple of months before it makes the journey to Broadway to establish a bridgehead for the theatre across the Atlantic.

There is no question that Indhu Rubashingham, who was appointed as the Tricycle’s artistic director in 2012, is determined to see it punch above its weight. Red Velvet – which, like Handbagged, this feisty lady directed herself – was the first production she staged in Kilburn and it amounted to something of a mission statement: know all men that this theatre will henceforth be showcasing talented young actors: there is to be a strong emphasis on new work, and the objective is always going to be to exceed – or, at the very least, match – the standards of Shaftesbury Avenue.

Red Velvet is the story of Ira Aldridge, a Shakespearean actor who appeared upon some of the world’s most hallowed stages and was received into some of its most illustrious salons. This was a remarkable thing, for he lived in the 19th century and happened to be a black man. Adrian Lester plays Aldridge with an affecting mixture of arrogance and trepidation.

 

Lolita Chakrabarti (Mrs Adrian Lester, I should point out) has fashioned what is essentially a very sad story. But, with her director, she is keenly aware of the ludicrousnesses of life – what sport they have with the over-the-top ham acting of Aldridge’s day – and this makes it often a very funny piece indeed.
When the great tragedian Edmund Kean is taken ill during a run of Othello at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, its French director (Eugene O’Hare) decides Aldridge is the man to replace him in the title role. This does not go down well with Kean’s son Charles (Oliver Ryan), who is playing Iago in the play-within-the play and sees the leading role as his by right.
As for Ellen Tree (Charlotte Lucas, playing the actress who is, in turn, playing Desdemona), she finds it difficult to cope working with an interloper who expects her to look at him in their love scenes rather than the audience. The “teapot style of acting” of the other chaps in the cast – one hand on hip, the other held out with a limp wrist – also grates with Aldridge, who was in many senses a pioneering “angry young man” of the stage.
The bitching and the blunders of the rehearsal room recalled for me Michael Frayn’s Noises Off. I was especially impressed by Simon Chandler’s turn as an old stock actor trying to somehow make it through the ordeal with some dignity intact; with Rachel Finnegan as Aldridge’s long- suffering wife; and Nic Jackman, who is an unalloyed delight as an eager-to-please young actor, soon reduced to a state of quiet despair by what is going on around him.
Lester gives the Moor everything he has got in the production that is eventually staged – the performance has obviously been informed by his own testosterone-charged turn in the role at the National last year - and this makes the mean and nasty reviews that Aldridge’s performance received at the time all the more depressing.
The Spectator took the view that “an African is no more qualified to play Othello than a huge, fat man is to play Falstaff.” The racism of The Times’s reviewer was even more apparent, when he observed of Aldridge that “the shape of his lips” meant it was “utterly impossible for him to speak English”.
Even these days, there are those who have a problem with “colour-blind casting” – the practice of casting actors in roles, irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds. But the alternative to it, so movingly shown here in the play’s final, haunting moments as Aldridge has to “white up” to play Lear, is manifestly cruel and wrong.
'Red Velvet' is at the Tricycle Theatre, to Mar 15; tricycle.co.uk 020 7328 1000