The storm clouds swirling above the open roof of the Pop-up Globe seemed to hold a mirror to the wild passions unleashed in an intensely emotional staging of Othello.
The play's volatile combination of love, jealousy and betrayal brings us face-to-face with the extremes of human behaviour and the production has taken to heart the "nothing extenuate" recommendation that Othello offers to those who re-tell his tragic story.
There is certainly no holding back as British director Ben Naylor presents a vigorously physical, blood-soaked interpretation of a play which has acts of appalling cruelty mingling with exquisite poetry.
The staging and design emphasise the military ethos that defines Othello's world. As his soldiers celebrate the drowning of their Turkish enemies, we see how a culture of boasting, drunkenness and brawling is implicated in the brutality that brings the story to its grim conclusion.
Te Kohe Tuhaka as Othello convincingly embodies the authority of a renowned general and, in his treatment of Desdemona, we get an unsettling reminder of the callous violence that was so powerfully evoked in Once Were Warriors.
