‘Love is a con. A construction. And I am an engineer’: De-constructing bisexual love and rejection in Othello’s Revenge (2011)

This article will examine the directorial approaches in Othello’s Revenge, directed by George Rodosthenous, in order to provide an insight to the adaptation process. The ‘framing’ of Iago, leading to his and Othello’s revenge, will be discussed in juxtaposition to K. McLelland’s bisexual reading of Othello in 2011 and I. Karremann’s evaluation in 2003 that ‘the play reads either as the tragic failure of a heterosexual love or as the tragic failure of a homosocial desire’. The different forms of sexual, homosocial and bisexual love will be explored in relation to the main characters in this production and demonstrate how Cassio, the only survivor of this emotional and physical catastrophe, was in fact the main axis for the narrative.