othello
Modern Othello on the mark
In a warehouse loft with no set, with actors wearing street clothes
and using their own vocal intonations, this is an
Othello that
gets everything that really matters right.
The director's programme note sets out admirable goals,
including an approach to text and voices with which I am in total
sympathy, and the company mostly achieves them.
The intimacy of the location, which seats about 60, helps in
the vocal department. Many of these young actors would have had a
tougher job fulfilling the aim of a natural speech pattern in a larger
venue where declamatory necessity might have undermined them. But
in this place it worked.
Among recent Shakespearean productions this distinguishes
itself because almost all the actors seem to have complete understanding
of what they are saying and project their characters accordingly. The
result is a Shakespeare easy to comprehend.
Few of the young cast are actors whom you would necessarily
think of in these roles. Taika Cohen, known more for his humorous
qualities, isn't the most obvious Othello. It's hard to envisage him
as a military general, yet, as jealousy invades Othello's sanity, he's
frighteningly believable. This is responded to equally well by
Rebecca Lawrence's Desdemona who, once I came to terms with her
and the play's accents generally, reveals goodness of character
along with incomprehension and fear. Iago (Carey Smith) needs to
develop more of the gleeful and malevolent aspect of his character's
evil, but you clearly see how Iago takes everyone in.
While the production deliberately avoids a concept, I found
that forgetting the original military setting and imagining it in a
more modern situation made the acting styles easier to accept as the
aspects of jealousy and power, which are at the play's heart, are
well-realized.
Action scenes are well-staged and the final scenes, from
Desdemona's bluesy Willow Song
till her murder, are given with all the horror due to them.
Producing company The Bacchanals say their philosophy is
grounded in the ideals of Poor Theatre. So they eschew production
values and this Othello may
not suit everyone. But to hear
a Shakespeare play that isn't one of the usual suspects, spoken with
real meaning as if it could be happening right now is good enough for me.
- Timothy O'Brien,
The Dominion
Speedy Othello about ordinary people
A long time ago I survived a 3½-hour production at the Opera House of
Romeo and Juliet which Shakespeare said should take "two hours' traffic
of our stage". I have sat through lengthy Lears and Hamlets but never
have I sat through so speedy a production of a Shakespearian tragedy
as David Lawrence's Othello
for the Bacchanals theatre group.
Performed in an attic apartment in Marion St which could at a
pinch seat about 50, without the encumbrance of scenery except
Desdemona's bed, it fair bowls along. The instant one scene ends
the next starts.
Costumes are street clothes, lighting and sound effects are kept
to an absolute minimum and the stage is a small rectangular space between
two facing sets of seats.
This Grotowski-like "poor theatre" places a huge burden on the
actors. The big, special Shakespearian voice, the grand gestures and
the pointing of a line or speech become irrelevant when the audience
is so close.
The problem is that the language was written to be spoken in
a larger space than a room. And while its intensity can still hold
an audience the "sound" of lines such as "Blow me about in winds,
roast me in sulphur, / Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!"
is needed to give them their full emotional force.
The cast of Othello
speak their lines with understanding
and at great speed. At times, however, they are so fast it all
becomes a bit of a gabble. Occasionally they fail to remember that
the closeness of the audience isn't a reason not to project or
enunciate what is not, even in Shakespeare's time, everyday speech.
Nevertheless, the actors throw themselves with a will into
the play and some interesting ideas about the play emerge. Carey
Smith's Iago is the least villainous Iago I have seen and a much more
frightening and believable "demi-devil" than is usual.
Taika Cohen first appears as Othello, not toying with a rose
as Laurence Olivier did but smoking a cigarette. A thick metal chain
around his neck is the only sign of military office and his description
of Othello's wooing of Desdemona is wonderfully matter-of-fact and
understated. Sitting only about 2m from him, I flinched when he
committed suicide.
There are solid performances from James Stewart as Roderigo
(despite a silly beard when he goes into disguise), Phil Grieve as
Brabantio, Alex Greig as Cassio, Rebecca Lawrence as Desdemona and
Eve Middleton as Emilia. What I will remember of this production,
apart from its speed, is that
Othello is not about grand,
distant figures but about ordinary people.
- Laurie Atkinson,
The Evening Post
Where every word hangs on how well it's delivered
Given the "poor theatre" approach The Bacchanals bring to their salon
production of Othello - staged
in the living space of a post-student
flat with rag-bag clothes, no set as such, minimal lighting and simple
ive music - everything hangs on how well its cast delivers the text.
Taking their cue from Hamlet's advice to the Players, the cast
members do indeed speak their speeches "trippingly on the tongue."
Speed, it seems, is of the essence, which at least gets us through
the virtually uncut text in about two and a half hours (the BBC TV
version is heavily cut and reputedly takes four hours).
Some literally trip over their syllables. Others do not
"stand upon points," riding their speeches "like a rough colt; [they
know] not the stop," rendering their speeches incomprehensible. Two
or three are very clear. But all of them have a thoroughly intelligent
understanding of their words and actions, and it is this that holds our
interest and communicates the story.
Their avowed intention is to use their own voices (and avoid
the "Shakespearean voice"), chatting naturally, as if this contrived,
convoluted and often obscure blank verse was everyday speech. By and
large it works, especially given the intimate venue.
Taika Cohen's Othello is as laid-back and minimalist as
Laurence Olivier's was florid and demonstrative. Where Olivier
explored the full depth and breadth of Moorish blood and passion,
Cohen opts for "the nature whom passion could not shake." He's one
of the boys and not one to make a public spectacle of his love for
Desdemona (Rebecca Lawrence). When the work of jealousy gnaws his
guts its progress to outward expression is as subtle as it is sure.
The outcome is frighteningly real. Lawrence gives us a Desdemona
who is intelligent, humane and trusting without being too naïve.
Carey Smith's Iago seems real from moment to moment but
despite his intellectual and verbal clarity, there is a strange lack
of emotional structure or psychological coherence. Maybe he's
thinking sociopath rather than manic depressive. Because this
production tells us these extraordinary events can overtake ordinary
events, I look for the turning point where Iago realizes he's out
of his depth and has to up the ante to lethal levels just to survive
and protect himself. If the actor and director have located that
point, they've kept it to themselves.
The Bacchanals are mostly post-graduate drama students with
quite a lot of experience in student, co-op and professional theatre.
In applauding their stated commitment to "exploring text-based
theatre" according to "the ideals of poor theatre", I challenge them
to lift their game.
One of the cornerstones of poor theatre is that the actors are
their own instruments and it is the creative way they work with the
text that provides all the "production values".
- John Smythe,
National Business Review
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