Word: othellos
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...ambition of the Harvard Dramatic Club production of Othello is conspicuous; and if there's always a long distance between ambition and success, this production covers the better part of it. With unusual diligence, the Loeb Othello treats the more far-ranging demands of Shakespeare with the kind of unhesitating ambition amateurs ordinarily concede to the professionals. It hasn't paid off quite so consistently. But it succeeds, more than enough to make amateur Shakespeare a very worthwhile proposition...
Without departing too much from convention, the production shifts some of its attention from Othello to the man who drives the 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...
...Othello too hangs helplessly on the overpowering false persuasions of Pachoda's Iago. Curt Anderson is an Othello of imposing appearance but with a somewhat lesser capacity for tortured response to Iago's calculated hints. But if it weren't that Othello's peculiar virtue is trust in other men--and his peculiar vice to distrust his own feelings in the unfamiliar pursuit of love--the battle wouldn't be worth the fighting. Iago so overpowers the Moor that pity keeps us on Othello's side much longer than hope. Though he plays with just enough confidence and grace...
...none of his strange twist of heart) she soothes Desdemona and chaperones her to bed with the kind of understated stage-presence that suggests a well-concealed understanding of how her mistress is to be handled. And Marie Kohler's Desdemona is more dutifully opposed than passively resigned to Othello's creeping suspicion--a refreshing variation on the usually-wilting Desdemona...
...might be argued that the change somewhat distorts O'Neill's intent. James (Robert Ryan) has toured the country for decades in a melodramatic potboiler, just as O'Neill's father did in The Count of Monte Cristo. Edwin Booth had once praised James' Othello, and he is haunted by the self-betrayal of his gifts. Ryan never quite suggests the commanding matinee-idol presence that Fredric March brought to the role...