Word: othellos
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...Othello needs to be retrieved even more than it needs to be revived. Of Shakespeare's four great tragedies, which include Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth, Othello has become increasingly less accessible to modern audiences and actors. There are several reasons for this. To the contemporary playgoer, the Moor's marital jealousy is more amazing than it is convincing, and the evidence of the telltale handkerchief seems unbelievably flimsy. Today's audiences are also more interested in lago's psychologically obscure malignity than in Othello's open nature and loftiness of soul...
...there is a tragedy in this "Fight of Champions," Joe Frazier is the Othello and the takers, that vast locust combine, play Iago. The prefight publicity has made it impossible for Frazier ever to be champ to black America and the rest of the world. Rather than revealing him as another black man of different convictions from Ali, the PR portrayed him as a vacuous white hope in blackface...
...order to gain admission the applicant is asked, among other things, the relationship of Shakespeare to Othello, Dante to the Inferno, Brahms to music, and Whitman to poetry. He must understand such words as debutante and modiste, know that Dali is a painter and verity is the opposite of myth. Only after having established such credentials is a man judged to be qualified under the union rules to become an apprentice steam fitter in New York. In the past, the test has weeded out 66% of the nonwhite applicants and only 18% of the whites-a fairly effective method, according...
...Note- "All's Well That Ends Well" will play through September 6 in alternation with "Othello" and Shaw's "The Devil's Disciple," which will be reviewed in these pages. The drive to the picturesque grounds on the Housatonic River takes about two and a half hours via the Massachusetts Turnpike, Interstate 91, and the Connecticut Turnpike to Exit 31 (at the bottom of the exit ramp, turn left despite the sign). Performances tend to begin promptly at 2 and 8:30 in the air-conditioned Festival Theatre. There are free facilities for picknickers on the premises...
...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, but Lee Richardson makes Othello's ensign seem more like a nimble, two-faced schemer from the ranks of middle management. Wisely and rightly, racial overtones are muted in this production, for Shakespeare was symbolically concerned with the darkness in men's souls and not the blackness of their skins...