Othello at Bard on the Beach stands in sharp contrast to the Intiman performance of my last review. Where the latter began with Iago racing through his lines while insidiously hanging on Rodrigo, this production plodded through the opening painfully slowly with the principles standing rigidly across the stage from each other. My fear that I would be suffering a rather stoic four-hour rendition was, thankfully, unfounded with the pace and animation increasing as the show progressed. But even as the tempo increased, the brilliant language of the play was crystal clear throughout - a claim I couldn’t make for the Intiman show.

I don’t know whether to credit the difference in the reading to the training and experience of a cast that spends more of its time doing Shakespeare than modern theatre, or whether it represents a contrast between actors who think that their job is to make Shakespeare sound ‘normal/natural’ or ‘modern’ and actors who embrace the heightened language and allow it to be different. But whichever, I felt that the power of the text really came through in this rendition. In particular, Bob Frazer’s Iago was a very literate take on the role, reveling in the language as much as the scheming.

Iago’s motivations were played fairly straight - as if Iago believed his own lies, and was only so skilled at engendering jealousy in Othello because he suffered from an advanced case of the same disease. Frazer only once really descended into the mustache twirling melodrama that often accompanies the role. His Iago was somehow harder to hate, but I think this was in keeping with director Dean Paul Gibson’s goal (stated in the program) of providing an Othello that was more shades of grey than black and white.

I liked Frazer’s Iago very much, but I’m going to be totally unfair and pick on one moment that struck me as ‘actorish’ because it seems instructive to me, and it’s my blog. Sorry, bud. In II:1, when Iago’s soliloquy turns to his wife’s suspected infidelity, the line is: “For that I do suspect the lusty Moor / Hath leaped into my seat, the thought whereof / Doth like a poisoned mineral gnaw my inwards...” After Frazer said the line, he curled inward like he was struck at that moment by a bad ulcer. It reminds me of the crack that ‘Method Acting is where you say your line and then you act a bunch’. Dan Donohue played the role last year at Ashland, and made a similar choice, but let the physical reaction happen at the thought of admitting his fear and disgust, so that he was crumpled while forcing the line out. I found acting on the line was far more effective here.

Naomi Wright was the most dynamic Desdemona I’ve seen yet. She brought a variety of reactions and emotional levels to a part that is often played on one note. Her performance was believable and tragically heroic. Desdemona is more courageous if she feels the fear of her situation than if she floats through the finale in total denial.

Before she misplaces it, Desdemona dangles the rather large love-token handkerchief limply from her hand during the first half of the play, turning it into a more significant set piece. I thought that decision makes Cassio’s claim to not know whose handkerchief he found in his lodgings disingenuous. But Cassio has always been a little suspect to me anyways (“that Cassio loves her I do well believe”, indeed). Side note: the handkerchief was invented by none other than King Richard the Second, and Shakespeare’s tragedy about the fall of that monarch is also playing this season at Bard on the Beach. Knowing how artistic directors live for these little inter-textual connections, this pairing of plays can hardly be a coincidence.

Michael Blake’s charismatic Othello made me think of a young Laurence Fischburne. (No, I haven’t seen Fishburne’s feature film of the role yet, so if the comparison is awful, mea culpa miserere me.) He played the role with a sort of stiff legged swagger that gave me the impression of a warrior more accustomed to the deck of a ship than a more pedestrian existence on land. I particularly enjoyed how he concealed his feelings from Iago, only admitting his growing jealousy to the audience in soliloquy after Iago had left the room in the middle of III:3. This allowed the second half of Iago’s ‘wooing’ to be played out in sharper contrast to the first, and I can almost believe his claim to be ‘one not easily jealous, but being wrought, perplexed in the extreme’ (V:2). Of course, since Shakespeare takes Othello from innocent bliss to murderous rage in a single, albeit long, scene, Othello is perhaps not the most self-aware of protagonists.

Mara Gottler’s costumes were beautiful, a sort of modernized doublet-and-hose look with less poufiness and more pleather. The sound design of Alessandro Juliani and Meg Roe was well conceived, using music to signal the shift to Cyprus, with a nice variety of Middle Eastern instruments and textures. The alarum of II:3 was so perfectly annoying that Othello’s command to ‘Silence that dreadful bell’ got a hearty laugh from the audience. That being said, the tent did have one technical flaw in the sound: there was a high-pitched ringing emitted from the system through-out the entire play. To my ear, the noise was often as loud as the conversations on stage, particularly during any quieter moments. Discussing this with my fellow play-goers at intermission, they were concerned that I must have been suffering from tinnitus. But once alerted to the problem, they too were unable to ignore it and thanked me after for ruining their second half. The ringing was also present during Comedy of Errors, the other play in the big tent, but that show was generally so much louder, that the buzz was quite easier to ignore.

The set was rather Spartan, but that seems to be typical for Othello. I’m not sure I liked the robo-bed that slid out on its own during the final scene change. It was a little spacey and took me out of the moment just as the play was leading to the climax. Maybe that effect worked better at night if they dimmed the lights during the transition, but in the bright matinee sunlight, it was unusual.

For the most part, I was not impressed by the fight choreography. On occasion people would run past each other with swords, and someone would get hurt, but I couldn’t see how it happened. Othello’s slight slap of Desdemona surely must have hurt her pride more than her cheek. There was, however, one bit of fight business I really liked: In every production I’ve seen of Othello so far, Iago stands idly by glowering as his wife Emilia reveals the depths of his treachery, and then, when it is too late to do anything but satisfy his vengeance, he kills her. This time, Iago makes his move much sooner, but is restrained by the Venetians. After Emilia tells all, Othello rushes in to execute Iago. The Venetians prevent this, but in doing so allow Iago to slip their grasp and murder Emilia. The blocking is simple enough to seem obvious, but since many other productions have failed to solve this problem satisfactorily, I felt it deserved a nod.

Ultimately I think this play succeeds because of the great ensemble work at Bard on the Beach. The play never devolved into the Iago Show or the Othello Show, but rather the whole cast worked well together telling a compelling story. The play runs through September 25.

[Photos of OTHELLO 2009 by David Blue. Michael Blake as Othello, Bob Frazer as Iago, Naomi Wright as Desdemona and Jennifer Lines as Emilia.]

Sep 14, 2009 | permalink