The Moor: An Othello Review

As a girl who grew up learning of the classics in the most impermanent ways, an interest in live theater wasn’t expected of me by anyone, least of all an interest in the densely worded and very particular world of Shakespeare. As I’ve experienced it, there’s an air of pretense and snobbery that lies adjacent to the theatre and even more so as it pertains to anything written by the Bard—so much so that people whose presence is more accepted at the theatre than mine whisper their confusion at the not easily digested language, for fear of looking as pretentious as they feel for saying it any louder. There’s an invisible ‘whites only’ sign and an unspoken “we don’t want you here”—though not expressed or felt by all—that becomes evident in scathing reviews of work that is objectively good.