Othello
by
William Shakespeare
Directed by Scott Wentworth
Critical
Reviews
 |
| Caralyn Kozlowski as Desdemona
in OTHELLO. Photo © Gerry Goodstein. |
"Outstanding!"
-- The Star-Ledger
"This production comes exactly
60 years after my first experience seeing Othello on stage
-- on Broadway with Paul Robeson, Jose Ferrer and a very young
Uta Hagen. I thought I would never see a staging so definitive
as that one. Perhaps I was a bit hasty."
-- The Princeton Packet
An "Othello" Well
Worth Waiting For
By Charles Paikert
-- The Star-Ledger
It's been 10 years since "Othello" has been performed in
New Jersey, but the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's current
production, which opened Saturday night and runs through Nov.
23, was worth waiting for. Director Scott Wentworth and a
talented team of artistic staff and actors struck just the
right notes, literally beginning with the ominous bells that
open and close the play, to nail one of Shakespeare's best
-- and most difficult -- plays.
Perhaps the most difficult challenge confronting any production
of the great tragedy is maintaining an equilibrium between
the title character, the proud but insecure dark-skinned mercenary
Moor, and the duplicitous Iago, who not only has many more
speaking lines (he has, in fact, more soliloquies than any
other Shakespeare character) but is one of the most deliciously
entertaining villains in all of Western literature.
Nearly as formidable is the trick of making the play's crucial
"jealousy scene" believable. Until then, we see Othello as
an accomplished military hero and supremely confidant leader
of men who is passionately in love with his young fair-skinned
Venetian wife, Desdemona. The tragedy that ensues is only
plausible if we are convinced that Iago has effectively preyed
on Othello's insecurities to unleash an all-consuming jealousy
-- "the green-ey'd monster which doth mock the meat it feeds
on."
Fortunately, the production succeeds on both counts. Paul
Mullins plays Iago as a sneering, sniveling, malevolent, back-stabbing
little creep, a perfect foil for Raphael Nash Thompson's haughty,
blustery, vain and physically imposing Othello, without upstaging
him. These two skilled actors even take advantage of the difference
in their size to mine a darkly comic vein lurking in the complicated
relationship between the characters.
They are especially good in the critical third scene of Act
III, when they appear to slow down a beat and make Shakespeare's
400-year old Elizabethan language sound as natural as a conversation
you might overhear in the lobby. Mullins' Iago is effortlessly
deceptive, skillfully exploiting Othello's insecurities, while
Thompson subtly but effectively exposes the frightening fragility
of Othello's seeming boundless confidence.
Once Othello's mask slips, Wentworth and his collaborators
make sure the rest of the play, now injected with a poisonous
momentum, is propelled with dramatic precision and sickening
velocity to its deadly conclusion.
Wentworth moves the action along quickly and crisply, but
also knows when to slow down and let us savor simmering schemes,
smoldering egos and intimate confidences. And he is immeasurably
aided by innovative scene, lighting and costume designs that
evoke not only an exotic time and place, but the play's shaded
nuances, as well as its careening, hairpin twists and turns.
The supporting cast is also outstanding, particularly Gregory
Derelian as a painfully vulnerable Cassio, Othello's wronged
second-in-command, and Jennifer Van Dyck as Iago's resiliant,
no-nonsense wife, Emilia. Caralyn Kozlowski's beautiful and
dutiful Desdemona effectively conveys her sad incomprehension
of the Moor's seemingly inexplicable violent and paranoid
rages, but lacks an erotic charge that should leave us with
no doubt as to the source of Othello's volcanic passion.
It is fitting, then, that the final scene in this fine production
strips the play to its essence. Othello's tragic conceits
and loving desperation are laid bare and lead to a grotesque
tableau of carnage strewn across his bedroom. But before the
curtain descends, Wentworth allows the spotlight to linger
on Iago's hateful face, revealing a haunting, chilling expression
of diabolical satisfaction.
Copyright © 2003 The Star-Ledger
By Stuart Duncan
-- The Princeton Packet
11/05/2003
When it comes to productions of Shakespeare's Othello in New
Jersey, the Shakespeare Theatre in Madison would seem to have
a lock. The last staging there of the tragedy was 10 years
ago, on the same site.
Through the years, many of theater's best-known names have
played the title role of the Moor, including Paul Robeson,
Ronald Colmn (on film), Orson Welles, Richard Burton, John
Gielgud, James Earl Jones, Laurence Fishburne (on film), Laurence
Olivier, Raul Julia, Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley. About
as many important actors also have taken the roles of the
villainous Iago or the innocent Desdemona.
The current production in Madison has no big names, but more
importantly, it has the finest balance of casting in years.
That means we, as an audience, need not be impressed by reputations
but rather can revel in the individual characters and the
playwright's extraordinary understanding of human nature.
Thus this production, beautifully directed by Scott Wentworth,
shows us an Othello magnanimous, guileless and credulous,
fiery in his openness, boundless in his confidence, ardent
in his affection, inflexible in his resolution. But when convinced
of intrigue, he is obdurate in his revenge. It is a somewhat
simpler Othello than many we have seen.
Centuries ago, Dr. Samuel Johnson described the intrigue:
"The gradual process which Iago makes in the moor's conviction
and the circumstances which he employs to inflame him, are
so artfully natural... that we cannot but pity him."
This is a production that makes Dr. Johnson prescient.
The company is a combination of recent veterans, one newcomer
and several long-time favorites. Paul Mullins, who plays Iago,
for example, is in his 13th summer season at Madison, and
has played everything from the very darkest (King John) to
the lightest (Blithe Spirit). Here he avoids the traps in
the work that snare so many Iagos to overact. Instead he lays
out a pattern of revenge that is both believable and villainous.
His scenes with Michael Stewart Allen, a superb Roderigo,
are the very essence of the fine line Shakespeare could toe
between black comedy and tragedy.
Caralyn Kozlowski has burst into our attention in this, her
third year. Her Desdemona is every inch regal, but also that
of a truly devoted wife and lover. Her very stature belies
the charge of necromancy leveled at her husband. Her genuine
confusion at his accusations of infidelity is poignant. Jennifer
Van Dyck plays Emilia, Desdemona's nurse and confidante, with
a devotion that must have been rare, even for those violent
days.
Raphael Nash Thompson makes his debut in Madison in the title
role. He has appeared at virtually every major regional theater
across the country. Physically he is exactly what the role
suggests, a powerful warrior, with the voice of a successful
one. Yet Mr. Thompson is most persuasive in his quiet moments,
when the fires of rage are banked. It is then we can see the
man with whom Desdemona shared her love.
Director Wentworth has clearly understood that for Othello,
as indeed perhaps with many of his time, women were either
goddesses or whores, with none between. When Desdemona's virtue
is questioned, he demands proof but then accepts only the
flimsiest. The choice to him must be black or white. Emilia's
soothing "I'll make the known" will fail against
such prejudice and, interestingly, the tragedy becomes her
too.
This production comes exactly 60 years after my first experience
seeing Othello on stage -- on Broadway with Paul Robeson,
Jose Ferrer and a very young Uta Hagen. I thought I would
never see a staging so definitive as that one. Perhaps I was
a bit hasty.
|
