THE LIEUTENANT, THE MOOR, HIS WIFE, AND HIS AIDE

THE LIEUTENANT, THE MOOR, HIS WIFE, AND HIS AIDE
Post One in the Othello series

The place: an outpost on the coast of Northern Cyprus. The time: a week during the Renaissance.
The characters: three male and three female leads, all of them stereotypes: the leader (Othello), the lieutenant (Cassio), the traitor (Iago), the ingénue (Desdemona), the soubrette (Emilia), and the femme fatale (Bianca).

Othello is, thus, the easiest to stage of Shakespeare's major tragedies: no change of place or time skip, only six major characters.
The plot itself is rather enthralling, since it invokes the idea that all leading characters have a goal: Iago wants to kill Cassio (either for revenge or unrequited love), Cassio wants his commanding officer's trust back, Desdemona wants to help Cassio, Othello (tricked by Iago) wants to punish Desdemona and Cassio for allegedly having an affair behind his back, Bianca wants Cassio to love her the way she loves him, and Emilia (the only one aware of Iago's schemes) wants the truth to be known and justice to be done.

It comes as no surprise that it is one of my favorite plays. And the themes it discusses (racism, peer pressure, gender violence, identity crisis, unrequited love) are still relevant in our days.