Crude eccentricities damage the potential brilliance of Othello at the National. Some of the visual gestures seem to have been approved by crazies from the neo-fascist fringe. The Moor is first seen doing a work-out with a punch bag but he doesn’t strike the bag, he grabs a broom handle and uses it to perform some fancy martial arts moves.

The action starts and Othello is accused of spiriting Desdemona away from her father’s house and seducing her by trickery or witchcraft. During these scenes he’s stalked by a mob of extremists who dangle nooses and threaten him with daggers. That’s just silly. Othello is the foremost warrior in Venice. Anyone who drew a knife on him would be dead within seconds. The far-right mob are clad in black and their status as fascists is emphasised by Iago (Paul Hilton) who resembles an Oswald Mosley clone. He even has a line of ants crawling across his upper lip. To amplify the Nazi theme, the action takes place on a tier of concrete steps like the Nuremberg stadium. And Iago’s soliloquys are styled as if they were orations by Hitler. An equally facile analogy. Iago’s monologues should be private confessions but he’s surrounded by a fan club of mime artistes in dark tights and T-shirts who gawp and stare and make demented gestures. What does it all mean? Anyone’s guess.

Director Clint Dyer has been tempted to overuse the National’s dazzling array of tricks and effects. Funky visuals light up the rear wall. Illuminated door frames drop from on high. A hectic soundtrack honks and parps throughout. Some of Shakespeare’s lines are obscured by improvised words hurled at Othello by the fascist lynch mob. Since when did the Bard need a co-writer? There’s a sense that Dyer doesn’t quite trust the playwright to do his job. After an hour, things calm down and the script gets a chance to operate unencumbered.

More problems emerge in the final act. The concrete Nuremberg steps remain in position so Desdemona’s moving scene with Emilia – which provides such a contrast with Othello’s brutality – is acted out on a flight of stone pews in an outdoor arena. Simple, feminine stylings are needed here. And the death scene looks horribly stark. The script indicates that Othello smothers Desdemona with a pillow on their marital bed. Here, the bed and the pillow are missing so Othello gets her in a complicated headlock and throttles her like an SAS assassin. Removing the play’s furniture destroys its emotional range. The acting rescues the show. Giles Terera is a charming, innocent and confused Othello whose descent from swaggering hero to paranoid killer seems perfectly credible. Willowy bombshell Rosy McEwen plays Desdemona with a surprising steeliness and a perky self-possession. Both are as good as you’re likely to see in these roles. And Emilia – the great whistleblower – is brilliantly rendered by Tanya Franks who switches in an instant from bashful serving girl to angel of vengeance. Despite its shortcomings, this production would probably do great business on Broadway.

Press is new monologue written and performed by Sam Hoare which, unsurprisingly, is about the press. He plays a cynical public schoolboy who drifts into tabloid journalism because it suits his devious, amoral character. He shows us the tricks of the trade. He hoodwinks strangers by speaking in fake Scots or Australian accents and he visits northern cities and destroys the lives of innocent people by concocting stories about crimes they haven’t committed.

His career takes off and he wins promotion to ‘head of features’ (which probably means ‘features editor’) at a national daily. He moves into a swanky home with a large mortgage but he remains a heartless self-seeker who doesn’t believe in the power of journalism to make the mighty accountable to the weak. Then the script takes a bizarre turn. He’s sent to cover riots and arson attacks in some anonymous city. Things get worse. The authorities threaten him with ten years in jail for reporting accurately on violent disturbances in the streets. Can this be the UK? Perhaps the story is set in the future.

As the play ends we learn that his ordeal refers to the mistreatment of reporters in despotic regimes around the world. OK. But why set it out as a puzzle? And he seems the wrong character to represent journalism as a noble quest for truth and justice. Romola Garai directs the show effectively but with some puzzling additions. Silhouettes of stick figures move periodically across the back wall. A maidservant who has no lines keeps wandering on stage and pilfering the journalist’s belongings. First she takes his pictures, then his table and carpet, and finally his chair. Obviously this symbolises his spiritual and material effacement. But the script tells us that already. Perhaps the show might have worked better without the whistles and bells.

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