Word: othello
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Oliver Parker's Othello is the more standard of the two, a solid reading that pulls out the stops on an easily played organ. This is, after all, a soap opera of the had-I-but-known variety. All the Moor has to do is ask his wife's servant, "Pray, did thee swipe fair Desdemona's hankie?" and the misunderstanding is resolved as smoothly as any episode of Home Improvement. But then there would be little allurement in the role for some of this century's most dominant actors...
...play drags toward its conclusion, Othello, deceived by lago into thinking his wife has been unfaithful, kills both Desdemona and himself in an act of unconvincing rage. Although Jed Silverstein and Alexandra Marolachakis give good performances as the foolish but passionate Cassio and the submissive Emilia, this play has few redemptive qualities...
Instead, "Othello" features an eclectic gathering of horrible effects. Othello first enters from beneath an electronic Bud Lite sign. The sound, though well-prepared, goes sour when whimsical musical moments and a garish announcement of the Venetian victory accompanied by disco lay waste to Shakespeare's play. Two guards, listed as "Mechanicals" in the program, wear expressionless masks, and the Herald speaks his lines in a deliberate monotone. Iago's deception of Othello occurs before a projection of Magritte's painting, "The Wind and the Song," and, before the first intermission, an actor walks onto the stage with a sign...
...directing that went into "Othello" seems to have been a question of caprice rather than care. However, director David Levine is not a madman with connections; everything strange in the production contributes to an overall distance between the audience and the stage. The questionable acting is probably intended to prevent the audience from identifying with any characters; and the annoying music, projections, and other directorial decisions all alienate the audience from a once familiar play...
Unfortunately, this successfully defamiliarized production of "Othello" is not a good one. Levine sacrifices both vicarious appeal and smoothness when he casts lago as a nice, boring guy, Othello as a quiet, badly-dressed general, and several minor characters as masked, "mechanical" bores. A sense of alienation is easy to achieve in theater. What takes more work is putting together a meaningful and entertaining play. Levine's "Othello" distances viewers "not wisely but too well" so well that the audience shrinks somewhat after each intermission...