On the same February night as the award-winning Sir Antony Sher opened in The Tempest for the RSC in Stratford, some hundred miles north another actor revealed to the critics his take on one of Shakespeare’s mightiest roles.

To the surprise of many, that was much-loved comic Lenny Henry, formerly “allergic to all bardolatry”, tackling Othello at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. The advance naysayers were proved wrong, the reviews were largely positive and Lenny and the lads, plus a couple of token lasses, set out on tour. Last week Bath, this week London.

It takes a worrying amount of time on the unforgivingly large stage of the Rose to see quite what all the hoo-hah was about. Henry speaks the verse efficiently enough, but with too much restraint, making it hard for us to comprehend how this particular Moor beguiled senator’s daughter Desdemona (Jessica Harris) into wedlock with his fabulous storytelling. Like many of his colleagues, Henry also struggles initially with the venue’s acoustics, and Conrad Nelson’s brutally pragmatic Iago doesn’t inveigle us in as he should with those treacherous soliloquies.

It’s no help that, in the rush to strip pomp from this play in order to focus on the hurtling narrative, Barrie Rutter’s no-nonsense production for Northern Broadsides also manages to divest the tragedy of crucial grandeur. The bare stage may be an exigency of the tour, but we gain no vital establishing sense of Venice or Cyprus, night-time deceit or daylight honesty.

And yet. As soon as Iago drops hints about Cassio’s romantic trustworthiness, Henry starts to flare into life, giving vent to Othello’s corrosive jealousy and making us marvel afresh at this muscled bear of a man towering over his small, delicate wife.

Harris turns Desdemona’s previous dopiness into something searingly sweet and truthful and, in Act V, everything belatedly becomes magnificent. Henry invests the soaring “It is the cause” speech with more emotion than I’ve ever heard before, Maeve Larkin’s impressive Emilia rightly gets to have her crucial say and all is the ineluctable fate of true tragedy.

Seeing as you’re a convert to the iambic pentameter, how about trying Bottom or Falstaff now, Lenny?
Until April 25. Box Office: 0871 230 1552. www.rosetheatrekingston.org