Even by the impressively high standards set over the years by Creation Theatre Company, its new production of Othello stands out for its excellence. Under the experienced direction of Charlotte Conquest, responsible in the past for such Creation successes as Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night, the company offers a lucid and compelling account of this dark study of a noble man brought down by a malevolent enemy’s manipulation of his (everyone’s?) fatal capacity for jealousy.

In a year not short of versions of Othello – including those of the Royal Shakespeare Company and Northern Broadsides with Lenny Henry in the title role, both recently reviewed on these pages – it is gratifying to applaud a ‘home-grown’ production that by no means suffers in comparison.

Creation’s shares with the latter an urgency and directness that is in part a function of the company’s latest performance venue, the New Road Baptist Church in Oxford city centre. This proves to be as suitable as it is convenient, with gripping ‘in yer face’ action offered to the audience ranged on three sides of the stage. There are, too, as a programme note from Oxford theologian Paul S. Fiddes suggests, certain parallels between the story and that of the Crucifixion, underlined by the Jesus-like character of Desdemona, played here with charm and grace by Ffion Jolly.

Nowhere is the intimacy of the venue better exploited than in the soliloquies of Iago, who is played with a chilling glee in his evil by Richard Kidd. As the unrepentant miscreant rejoices in the subtlety and malice of his plans, we are made to feel an unwelcome complicity in them – and thus almost contaminated by the connection. Ashley Bale’s lighting bathes him in red at these moments, adding to the diabolic nature of his utterances.

Victor Power’s Othello, swaggering and mighty in the triumphs of his early scenes – joyfully poetic, too, in his account of his successful wooing of Desdemona – suffers a heart-breaking moral decline as the poison does his work. The savagery of his assault on his lovely, and still loving, wife is a terrifying illustration of how far this mighty man has fallen.

Michael Cassio, the soldier ‘set up’ by Iago to appear to be the lover of the blameless Desdemona, is played with a welcome touch of the upper-crust dandy, almost the fop, by Richard Neale. This is an approach particularly well-suited to a production relocated, as this one is, to the 1930s, when such characters abounded. Rhys King’s anguished rake Roderigo looks at home, too.

Cassio declares in affected tones to Iago: “Tis my breeding/That gives me this bold show of courtesy,” before planting a smacker on Iago’s wife, Emilia. In a rare comic moment the villain replies: “Sir, would she give you so much of her lips/As of her tongue she oft bestows on me/You would have enough.” By the end of the play, in a first-class performance from Caroline Devlin, we will have heard that tongue employed to excoriating effect on her wicked spouse once more. But, alas, her words come too late to prevent catastrophe.

n Othello continues at New Road Baptist Church until May 30. Box office: 01865 766266 (www.creationtheatre.co.uk).