Word: desdemona
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...tragedy: Iago. Plotting on the edge of Thomas Parry's ingenious set (a terraced and tiered battlement of slabs that interlock in five different "scenes,") Ralph Pochoda (as Iago) beguiles the audience only a little less than he does his victims onstage. In the process of driving Othello to Desdemona's murder, he fleeces Roderigo with confidence-inspiring volubility. The objections of Desdemona's wishful suitor (played aptly by Rick Carey as a puppyish windvane to Iago's rhetorical blasts) become thinly veiled pleas for a few more flattering promises...
...toughest boy in the barracks but a man obsessed by romance, heroism and honor. He dwells in images and on them. Even in the act of suicide, he summons up an image of how he once smote a circumcised dog of a Turk. His love of Desdemona is a kind of image of love. His heart breaks when lago tarnishes that image, long before Desdemona herself is actually destroyed. Neither Olivier nor Gunn nor Jones has been able to convey this. Thus none of them has struck any consuming emotional fire out of the Othello-Des-demona relationship...
Misplaced Mirth. The Desdemona of the present production would cast a chill on any Othello. Jill Clayburgh is beyond her depth both artistically and temperamentally. She may well have seen the inside of a Seven Sisters college, but never for a single instant does she convince one that she has walked in the court of Venice, or even rumpled her hair, let alone been heart-ravished. As lago, Anthony Zerbe is the happiest casting choice. He brings a silky, insidious plausibility to the role, which at least accounts for Othello's so persistently believing him to be "honest...
...animal or vegetable. The 250-watt Satchmo grin flicks on at will, the massive shoulders shrug at circumstances beyond comprehension. But under the actor is the lava of black rage. When it erupts, the other players are inflamed. When Jane Alexander appears with Jones, she is a common-law Desdemona, the only believable white character in the film...
Gunn is not alone in psychologically violating the play. There should be a good deal of Juliet in Desdemona. After all, she is a virginal young girl swept into sensual love with the Moor, who is anathema to her father in much the same way that a Montague was to a Capulet. But Roberta Maxwell conjures up a prim housewife somewhat baffled by a hubby with a bad case of the sulks. Sne achieves an affecting poignance only in her deathbed speech. As for lago, he should be Lucifer's child trailing a brimstone stench of evil...