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For the past decade or so, Howard Productions has been bringing professional high quality English theatre to the Lake Geneva region. Once again, it is bringing another Shakespeare play, Othello, and once again at the beautiful Chateau de Prangins (Museum of Swiss History) outside Nyon overlooking the lake road toward Lausanne. There will be three performances by Britain's TNT Theatre on Thursday, 17 June, Friday 18 June, and Saturday 19 June, 2010 with curtain rise at 2000 hours. The aperitif starts at 1900 hours. All tickets are 40.00 CHF and not numbered, so first come first served for seats. For further information and tickets, go online at: www.howardprod.ch

The chateau is an ideal location, not only for holding plays (in the open-air courtyard) but also for having your own picnic or drinks in the surrounding park area. The production also offers its own aperitifs before the actual show. We like to go with friends a couple hours beforehand, put out the blankets on the grass, and then have dinner with nice wine from the picnic hamper. It is also a really worthwhile experience for children, such as our ten-year-old who adored a previous presentation of Taming of the Shrew last year. However, best to bring kids 15 and older.

Othello is Shakespeare's most perfect play, a masterpiece of dramatic construction. Othello is a thriller, a love story, a tragedy and an exploration of race, prejudice, power, war and human folly. Othello was written by Shakespeare at the height of his powers: its poetry is finer than Hamlet, its psychology deeper than Macbeth, its love story more compelling than Romeo and Juliet, its heartbreaking tragedy more moving than King Lear. Othello could be described as the finest play ever written.
And, like so many of Shakespeare's greatest plays, it is a work much misunderstood.

This is not a play about the helpless victim Desdemona falling to the cruelty of her husband and treachery of Iago. This is a play about fascination - fascination in love, jealousy and death. The central characters are caught in a terrifying vortex of their own making and perhaps their own desire. Othello is the fascinating outsider, the dark "other", but also a conqueror, general and leader of men. Iago is Shakespeare's largest role, a huge complex character consumed by envy and giddy with the power he wields over his so-called "superior", Othello. Desdomona abandons herself to the Moor in defiance of her father and embarks on an adventure whose tragic end is perhaps a form of desire.

Paul Stebbings directs Othello, Thomas Johnson composes the score - the same team that brought Hamlet and King Lear successfully to Geneva and toured world-wide. This Othello will be marked by clear story telling, gripping action and visual imagery with a live score sung and played by the performers. The production will be original and bold but at the same time true to Shakespeare's concepts and reflect the style that might have been used at the Globe in the Bard's own time.