Casting Lenny Henry in the role of Othello ensures a breathless audience — greedy to see how the neophyte compares with such august predecessors as Paul Robeson, Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier.

Barrie Rutter’s production for Northern Broadsides of this most operatic of plays is brisk and efficient. The choice of Henry in the lead is what distinguishes it; the comedian has done little in the past to suggest he can convince as a tragic hero. For Henry, Shakespeare’s drama of love, jealousy, racism and reputation is a formidable challenge.

When the production opened at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in February, he defied the doubters’ expectations. His assurance has since grown.

Henry’s stage presence is substantial. He doesn’t really look soldierly, despite his shaved head and clipped beard but his physical bearing is impressive; he conveys both power and stillness.

It is easy to see why the men under his command would regard him with fear and awe, and why Jessica Harris’s Desdemona might find him sexually compelling — though, in fact, the two do not have great chemistry.

It’s a little harder to believe in Othello the spellbinding storyteller who charms his bride with accounts of his travels. Henry speaks the verse gravely; occasionally his diction lacks precision, and his baritone is not exactly musical. But for the most part his phrasing is clear and balanced.

This is a performance of dignity, which peaks when Othello’s jealous inferences begin to grip his whole being.

Some of the other acting is loud and unsubtle. Yet Conrad Nelson proves a twistedly intelligent Iago, revelling in his manipulations, while Sara Poyzer is a poised Emilia and Richard Standing a vivid Cassio, at his best in the scene where Iago’s lackeys craftily get him drunk.

More problematic is the thin atmosphere. Despite a few bits of business with military charts and models, there is little sense of the play’s setting in time of war, nor of its location in cosmopolitan Venice and then in alien, disorderly Cyprus.

Ruari Murchison’s design is dark and anonymous — its most memorable feature the marital bed of Othello and Desdemona, which seems improbably narrow.

While a spare directness may be the house style of Northern Broadsides, Othello is a play that calls for grandeur. This is largely absent. But Lenny Henry’s unexpected mid-life embrace of Shakespeare must rate as a success.

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