Othello

Reviewed by Bob Verini
Old Globe Theatre (San Diego)
Through July 27

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Photo by Craig Schwartz

A rip-roaring Othello is being offered under the stars at San Diego’s Old Globe, in a fast-paced production full of suspense and action. Of course, many will not approve of the price paid for all this excitement, which includes a decided dearth of poetry and romance; some really hammy acting and barbarous verse-speaking; and the excision of at least 1/6 of the text (in San Diego, evidently, less is Moor). This is not, can we agree, an impeccable Othello, but it is an absorbing and stylish one, sparked by a remarkably good Iago and superb musical shading.

The period chosen is 18^th century Napoleonic, the men dashing in tight white trousers and dark blue tunics; the ladies, fetching in their Jane Austen frocks. The era’s global adventuring proves a good fit with Shakespeare’s seafaring scourges of the terrible Turk, and in fact I’d be willing to bet that a major influence on Barry Edelstein’s conception was The Black Count, Tom Reiss’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Gen. Alexandre Dumas, the dashing mixed-race French commander whose son went on to write The Three Musketeers. Dreadlocks flowing, body strutting, Blair Underwood (of L.A. Law) invests his Othello with the cooing melodies of the West Indies – Dumas’s actual birthplace – for a characterization of unfailing self-confidence and vainglory. He is vulnerable in his pride, just as Dumas was when his commander Bonaparte became suspicious of his ambition. Self-image questioned, Othello suffers his fall from grace. (Dumas did likewise.)

In this production, that fall is melodramatic but never reaches tragic dimensions, largely because the stakes are kept so frustratingly low. Kristen Connolly is ruinously cast as a crass, climbing, common Desdemona with no trace of the delicate innocence ascribed to her in the dialogue. It’s as if the play had two Emilias, really, and it doesn’t help that Connolly and Angela Reed, the nominal tart wife of Iago, have been encouraged or allowed to hit every single emphasis in each line of iambic pentameter. (“Your WIFE, my LORD, your TRUE and NOble WIFE.”) The sauciness Edelstein hangs on both characters seems a concession to modern sexual politics, but it certainly detracts from the heartbreak of their destruction.

In a similar way, the key supporting males are rendered in bright primary colors: Noah Bean’s Cassio is purely romantic; Mike Sears’s Brabantio, a fussy old man; and Jonny Orsini’s Roderigo reduced to mere buffoonery. By reducing their stature and complexity, Edelstein makes it easy for an audience unused to Shakespeare to follow broad, crude lines of action, though at the loss of the gravity needed for tragedy. Watching this Othello spiral into madness inspires no rumination on the human condition; he’s just a headstrong dude making some spectacularly wrong decisions.

On the other hand, Richard Thomas’s Iago is the best reason to brave the 5 Freeway before the show closes on July 27. Thomas understands what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil” – the notion that some of the worst crimes are committed by little, unremarkable men – and presents a stolid bureaucrat lacking in ambition and ego, exactly the sort of man Othello would never suspect of deceit in a million years. I’ve seen more Iagos mince and preen and hiss around a stage than I can count, and you always wonder: How can this general not see through him? Yet when Thomas’s Iago is left alone – to commune with us – his hatred explodes out of him like the giant cannon wheeled in for the Cyprus scenes. You believe that this man would plot another’s destruction for no good, earthly reason, and that is truly terrifying.

The terror is intensified by Curtis Moore’s original music, scored for twin percussionists who wield drumsticks and xylophone mallets like magicians. Their accompaniment smacks of wind chimes here, of samba nights in Rio there, and, whenever Iago wants to share with us his next villainous move, the lights dim as a rattle-snake hiss comes up to egg him on. Once again, not a subtle choice. But it sure is gripping.

Old Globe Theatre, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park, San Diego; Tues.-Sun., 8 p.m.; through July 27.(619) 234-5623, theoldglobe.org