Word: cassio
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...loving terms with his ex-wife (Signe Hasso), who plays Desdemona. But as he settles down into a long run, and really gets hold of his role, it takes an ever tighter hold on him. He begins to suspect his pressagent (Edmond O'Brien) of being a backstage Cassio. He also experiences some sickening sideslips into full loss of identity. The company becomes more & more nervous about the frightening sincerity with which he plays his strangling scene with Desdemona. Will he finally go completely bats and commit murder...
Lesser parts are competently, though not brilliantly performed. James Monks, of "The Eve of Saint Mark," does the best job of the minor players as Cassio, another victim of Iago's treachery. Uta Hagen is a very frail and very dainty, but also a very spiritless Desdemona. Margaret Webster, who directed the present revival, plays Emilia, Iago's wife, completely straight. She adds not one touch of her own which would let the audience know whether she is working for or against her villainous mate...
...which are not entirely happy. The recasting of the scenes into two acts is a necessary expedient. But there is also an annoying amount of expurgation of certain crudities which it might be thought that over three centuries had succeeded in mellowing. And in the crucial scene where Cassio is forced by the craft of Iago to convict himself before Othello in a completely misleading way, the clinching evidence of the handkerchief is in this performance somehow strangely omitted...
...spite of the somewhat excessive faces and eyes he makes. Nan Sunderland (Mrs. Huston) is as vivacious and as sweet as Desdemona should be, but she can't help looking a little mature. Euqal praise might be extended to Natalie Hall as Emilia and G. P. Huntley, Jr. as Cassio...
Ethel Taylor in this role achieved no heights, but allowed her light to be extinguished gracefully; Virginia Bronson as Emilia was excellent, and if Brabantio recited his lines as if preparing for an examination, Cassio and Roderigo were fully adequate. The production was was both rich and smooth, with settings at once satisfying and suggestive, and with no long waits between them such as often dull the interest of Shakespeare. Mr. Leiber offers the most painless method of reviewing the important play...