Directed by Arin Arbus, this Othello is really a New York
production: birthed at Theatre for a New Audience, reviewed to much
acclaim, and shoved into Intiman’s season when Bart Sher—who was supposed to direct his own
Othello—announced his resignation. This
Othello—which gave Charles Isherwood of the New York
Times, and many others, a serious case of the vapors—was
supposed to be a plum, a gift for Intiman’s audience. But something
funny happened on the way to Seattle.
Opening night’s production at Intiman had none of the heralded
steel, electricity, and spark. The war god Othello (Sean Patrick
Thomas) had all the masculine energy of a nice guy mowing his
lawn—not the man who is allowed to violate a deep social taboo,
marrying a white senator’s daughter, because he’s a paragon of nobility
and the baddest ass in the Venetian army. Othello is a tragedy
because the hero begins so strong and ends up writhing and weeping on
the floor—unmanned, betrayed, duped. Othello should begin the
play on a precipice; Thomas begins on a stepladder. He doesn’t have far
to fall.
You may also remember Thomas from Save the Last Dance, the
2001 movie about a gallant black man who teaches a white ballet student
about “moves” and “flava” and how to slouch. It’s a goofy movie, a
dated relic about how white girls and black boys are supposed to act.
But the fact that the racial politics of the movie are so embarrassing
raises a question: If the fantasies of racial harmonists are coming
true, if there’s more cultural space for people of African descent to
be timid and nerdy and bad at fighting and dancing and
sports—anti-Othellos or simply a-Othellos—will that suck
some of the dramatic wind from Othello‘s sails?
A brief recapitulation: Othello and Desdemona, a senator’s daughter,
fall in love and marry in secret because they know the senator would
disapprove. The senator finds out—the beginning of Iago’s plot to
vivisect the Moor—and demands a midnight audience with the
powerful duke to complain. The duke listens to all sides: the senator’s
(the African bewitched her!), Othello’s (all I did is tell
her exciting war stories), and Desdemona’s (yes, he’s black; no,
I don’t care).
The duke approves the marriage, mostly, it seems, because he needs
Othello to fight the invading Turks. You know the rest: little lies,
bigger lies, drunken misunderstandings, a strawberry handkerchief, and
a lot of death on one marriage bed. If Othello were a white war hero
who married Desdemona, the senator wouldn’t care. It’s the senator
hearing that “an old black ram is tupping your white ewe” that drives
him bonkers and sets the tragedy in motion.
Shylock, Shakespeare’s other great racial outsider, would—I
think—have less wind taken from his dramatic sails were he a
gentile. The dramatic momentum in Merchant of Venice depends as
much on capitalism and cruelty as on cultural identity. Aaron the Moor,
the third and far more minor example (from Titus), could be
anybody—he’s just a bottomless pit of malice whose race hardly
matters. But Othello’s blackness is everything; it inverts the cult of
warrior nobility with something as thin as the color of skin.
The world has seen white Othellos—Patrick Stewart played him
in 1997 in a “photo-negative” production where all the other actors
were black. But even the experiments in cross-casting demand that we
have this dangerous-black-man stereotype in our minds, even if just to
watch the play against the grain. Othello is over 400 years
old—what challenges will directors and actors face as attitudes
toward race and cultural identity change in the next 400?
Anyway—back to this Othello. The set, by designer Peter
Ksander, is boldly stark: two doors, sometimes two chairs, a long
table, and a wood floor of wide planks, mottled in black and white. The
minimalism is refreshing when so many companies are trying to trick out
the classics with digital gadgetry (the Wooster Group’s high-tech,
many-screened Hamlet; Radiohole’s lo-fi, bric-a-brac, multimedia
take on Moby-Dick).
Instead of the sweet but steely flower at the center of
Othello‘s heartbreak, Desdemona (Elisabeth Waterston) is merely
tall, with a hint of the cold fish. The passionate conflagration
between Othello and Desdemona—the passion that gives them the
courage to marry in secret and the passion that will result in their
deaths—is absent. It must’ve fallen off the back of the truck on
the way west on I-90.
Othello‘s greatest performance goes to John Campion as Iago,
who looks and sounds a lot like philosopher (and pop-media star) Slavoj
Žižek. Block-shaped and gray-bearded, Campion reveals his machinations in
a phlegmy, Slovenian brogue. His transitions between the impassioned
soliloquies and the casual way he erodes Othello’s confidence in his
wife’s fidelity are terrifyingly mercurial and tightly controlled.
“I hate the Moor,” he hisses, venomous spittle gathering in
his beard. Shortly afterward, he casually remarks to Othello: “I know
our country disposition well;/ In Venice they do let heaven see the
pranks/they dare not show their husbands;/their best conscience/Is not
to leave’t undone, but keep’t unknown.” Iago dips his poison in
Othello’s ear so artfully, it’s traumatic to watch—if Campion can
lie so thoroughly, so convincingly, who in the world can we trust?
Kate Forbes, as Iago’s abused wife, Emilia, is also
excellent—wise and sad, she slinks around the stage like a dog
waiting for its next beating. While everybody else in the play is
freaking out about race, Emilia meditates on gender. She tells
Desdemona that men “are all but stomachs, and we all but food;/To eat
us hungerly, and when they are full,/They belch us.”
She beats John and Yoko to the punch by 363 years: Woman is the nigger of the world. 
This is an appalling production. I am an Intiman subscriber of longstanding and have enjoyed over the years generally competent, sometimes very good productions. This is neither. My partner and I found the production laughable. Othello was comically amateurish as though someone had told the actor that to perform Shakespeare one walks to the front of the stage puffs out one’s chest and declaims with a roar – only the roaring was intermittent. As for Iago – what is with the hunched look and the at times unintelligible speech. Iago reminded me of a cross between Fagin in Oliver and Peter Cook doing Richard the 2nd. We had a nice class of wine at the interval and went home.
this is quite a fine take on the production which i saw last nite. john campion [by name already a scotsman, and that of a great poet too] brought a softened scots brogue to his role, check out the many shakespeare roles he has played on google. and was the only one who could both project and enunciate shakespearan language. the fellow who played othello lacks heft, is more like some kind of lieutenant than a general. desdemona came alive towards the end, i am not quite sure how much heat ought to be generated on stage between her and othello, it is perhaps just as well that most of that is left to the imagination these days. i suppose one could do the two of them in a kind of pornographic romper room, too, whatever that would add to amplify and makes his so easily elicited jealousy convincing. to the insecure a single word of poison in the ear will set off that curse. there is a great othello now playing in europe by petar sellars that is coming to new york in the fall: http://www.signandsight.com/features/188…
i would not call it an entirely appalling production, the seattle theater audience was its usual generous self towards it.i guess they had to wait with their applause since generally they applaud the set, so much more spectacular than the interior of their burgs. but the production fell entirely to pieces at the end.
I thought I was the only one who thought Campion looked and sounded like Žižek. I kept expecting him to go off on a tangent about post-Marxist ideology and the radical alterity of the Other.
Philosophy humor! BAM!
What a gassy bit of writing. You seriously need a decent editor.