Olivier’s Othello was always a racially offensive anachronism

In his fascinating piece on plays performed on screen rather than in the theatre (The film’s the thing: Ian McKellen’s new Hamlet shows the screen can outdo the stage, 12 February), Michael Billington says “The film of Olivier’s Othello now seems a racially offensive anachronism”. It seemed that to me at the time. I saw Othello at the National Theatre in 1964, when we were told that this was a great classical actor at the height of his powers. At 18, I was more susceptible to fashionable opinion than I have since become, but even then I thought that Laurence Olivier’s leaping, preening, shouting performance was grotesque. And although I wasn’t notably what we didn’t yet call politically correct or woke, I thought it was indeed racist, a parody from the days of minstrel shows. Did no one else then feel this?
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Combe Down, Somerset