A subtle yet powerful 'Othello'
Thompson shines in Shakespeare tragedy
LENOX - John Douglas Thompson has played Othello twice before, including a magnetic performance at the American Repertory Theatre. Joining him on the Shakespeare & Company stage is Michael Hammond, essaying his first Iago. And both men, along with director Tony Simotes, have created an "Othello" that feels at once fresh and familiar, unexpected and right.
Simotes has set Shakespeare's tragedy around 1820, inspired, as he says in the program notes, by the paintings of Francisco Goya. That's not an obvious association for "Othello," but the rich shadows and deep colors prove an apt milieu for the timeless tragedy of pure love manipulated into murderous rage by a heartless villain.
On press night, the first few minutes of the production felt dangerously rushed - as if adrenaline and energy had flowed so high that they would carry the characters racing ahead before any of us could catch our breath. Hammond's Iago, in particular, seemed to be speaking almost impossibly fast. But the actor soon found his feet and proceeded to create a portrayal of the master schemer that is as interesting as it is atypical.
The very name "Iago" conjures images of diabolical cunning and guile, and indeed Hammond offers glimpses of that whenever he is onstage alone, addressing the audience. The rest of the time, however, he's exactly the sort of bluff, friendly, likable fellow you'd expect from all the other characters' repeated descriptions of him as "honest Iago." Whether planting jealous fears in Othello's brain or urging Cassio to have a drink, this Iago never evinces a trace of cunning or subterfuge. He seems honest indeed - and that makes his treachery all the more successful.
Thompson, meanwhile, brings the same majestic physicality to his Othello that made him unforgettably charismatic on the ART stage. He also imbues the noble Moor with a subtle exoticism that underscores just how much of an outsider Othello is: He speaks with a faint accent, he carries himself like a visiting king, and he speaks to the heavens in a way that makes you understand why Desdemona's father would have accused him of witchcraft.
Indeed, in the critical moment when Othello succumbs to Iago's poisonous murmurings and gives himself over to jealousy, Thompson speaks his lines not in a towering rage, but in an even more terrifying way: as the quiet invocation of some monstrous inner demon. "All my fond love thus do I blow to Heav'n. Tis gone," he says, with a delicate puff of air toward his fingers, like a child with a dandelion, then whispers - whispers, like a conjurer, rather than yelling like a fighter - "Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell."
In smaller roles, Kristin Wold makes an earthy Emilia; Elizabeth Aspenlieder gives the flirtatious Bianca a winning blowsiness, which offsets the stiff British schoolboy mannerisms of LeRoy McClain's Cassio. Ryan Winkles is perfectly foppish as Iago's foolish pawn, Roderigo, and Walton Wilson is the very portrait of a thwarted father as Brabantio. Gail Brassard's quietly opulent costumes and Yoshi Tanokura's refined, pillared set, lit with appropriate chiaroscuro by Les Dickert, add depth and texture to the staging.
With so much richness along the way, it's disappointing that the climactic scene in Desdemona's bedchamber somehow goes slack. It builds and builds, right up until the moment when Desdemona, whom Othello believes he has already smothered, briefly revives - and then the tension drains, and what should be heartbreaking plays out at an emotional distance.
The problem lies partly in some uncharacteristically awkward blocking from Simotes, putting the characters apart when they should be together and together when they should be apart, and partly in Merritt Janson's Desdemona. She's lovely, with full lips and a throaty voice; her singing of the willow song is particularly enchanting. But she's also curiously vacant emotionally, and if we don't feel the full, vital presence of Desdemona as she faces her unjust death, we're left a little vacant, too.
Then, too, Iago is curiously recessive as the last threads of the tragedy uncoil. After the complexity and variety of all the scenes between him and Othello that have come before, their final moments together fall a little flat. Perhaps as the run goes on - "Othello" is up until Labor Day - the end, like the beginning, will find its proper pace and come fully to life. Or, as it must, to death.
