DOES THE ACTOR FIT THE ROLE?

Ken Branagh continues his year long Garrick takeover, presenting The Tricycle Theatre's production of Lolita Chakrabarti's 2012 play, Red Velvet as the season's third addition.

A vibrant meditation on the perceptions of race in an era that saw the abolition of slavery in England, Oliver award winner Adrian Lester reprises his role as Ira Aldridge, a young African-American who broke down boundaries of colour and battled engrained social and theatrical prejudices when he stepped in to the role of Othello after actor Edward Kean collapsed on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in 1833.

Before that, no black actor had ever starred as the embittered Moor, although Shakespeare's character was canonically a man of colour. Chakrabarti explores the resulting fall out from when he stepped upon the stage, to the success he found as he toured the world and became a living legend of his time.