Red Velvet, Tricycle, London Damned by Despair, NT Olivier, London Loserville, Garrick, London
On 25 March 1833, the crowd flocking into Covent Garden's Theatre Royal doubtless expected a tour de force from Edmund Kean, popularly deemed the greatest actor of his time. Coleridge observed, famously, that to see him act was "like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning", yet the shock reverberating round the auditorium that day in March was of a different ilk. Playing Othello (blacked-up, as was customary), t…