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And I will kill thee and love thee after
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nineweaving and I went tonight to see the Actors' Shakespeare Project's Othello. If it was not as objectively devastating as the last production I saw (Willard White, Ian McKellen, Imogen Stubbs, directed by Trevor Nunn in 1990; I watched the DVD last October and excrucior), it was very, very good. Unaccountably I had never heard of Ken Cheeseman, whom I will actively follow in future; in field boots and a battered flight jacket, he makes a sandy, rangy Iago, sweet-talking and scoffing from his blue-eyed coyote's face; he convinces as his comrades' "honest Iago" in part because it seems paranoid to suspect anyone so loudmouthed and physically lively—and unsparing in his sarcasm—of the stealthy hatreds and stratagems that his name is a byword for. Even in soliloquy, he is never sinister, except perhaps for the admiration with which he pronounces, as if naming himself, Divinity of hell! But when he takes center stage, the wires that track from various points of the set all converge on him, at the heart of the web. He catches the spotlight and hurls it across the audience, playing with our attention as he will grandmaster the other characters to their downfall. And he is visibly the elder of Jason Bowen's Othello, an old campaigner who has been vaulted by the meteoric Moor and then his lieutenant Cassio; whatever rationale he tips to the audience or throws out to his dupe Roderigo or refuses to offer to his judges in the end, we might as well believe it a kind of boredom, the exercise and proof of his soldier's skill. He too can plan and carry off as shattering a victory as his general's over the Turks. Wounded, threatened with torture, with no more rue or resentment than before, he laughs: Demand me nothing: what you know, you know. I'd cast him as Snorri Sturluson's Loki.
For the rest of the cast, I appreciated very much that Brooke Hardman's Desdemona was neither a sacrificial victim nor a child-bride china doll; she is chaste and true, but neither of those qualities annuls her passion, her playfulness, and the strength of mind with which she fights for her love and her life, even in the shock of murderous jealousy. (Nor was she fair-haired, which made a nice change from the traditional contrast.) As Cassio, Michael Forden Walker showed off the ambiguities in his clean-cut lieutenant with a drunk scene that shifted from comical to violent in two shots of vodka and a sequence of meetings with Bianca, passionate twinings after which he carefully blots off his lover's lipstick, containing himself back into his reputation again. Paula Langton simply rocked as Emilia: seen first for a single scene as the casually confident Duke of Venice, she plays thereafter a woman terribly without power, still hoping against years of evidence otherwise that the proper obedience, service, support will return her abusive husband's love to her, as once she must have known it to speak so bitterly of men's inconstancy. Her exposure of his double-dealing is at once the healthiest and the most fatal decision she could make, and this production does not smooth over the fact that while Othello's murder of his wife is a crime of passion, Iago's is a split-second calculation to save his own skin. Which brings me to Othello, without whom all the Desdemonas and Iagos from Stratford to Singapore will not make a production: I think what I liked best about Bowen was (ironically, because it made the later scenes so much more difficult to watch) the quiet sunniness with we first observe him interacting with his wife, his ancient, his lieutenant, his men, which is not the same as naïveté. He is, genuinely, by nature not a jealous man; coveting no one else's position, he has no radar for the behavior in others. And yet the violence he offers Iago for slandering his wife's name is the same violence he will work upon her, obverse-reverse; we are all coins that can be turned to show one face or the other, or both at once as we spin. The set reflected this, in light and dark puzzle pieces that I would swear changed between scenes. Nor I neither by this heavenly light—I might do't as well i' the dark.
I think there are three shows left before the production closes; I'd catch one if I were you. In the meantime, since I have to get up at ridiculous o'clock, I'm going to sleep.
nineweaving and I went tonight to see the Actors' Shakespeare Project's Othello. If it was not as objectively devastating as the last production I saw (Willard White, Ian McKellen, Imogen Stubbs, directed by Trevor Nunn in 1990; I watched the DVD last October and excrucior), it was very, very good. Unaccountably I had never heard of Ken Cheeseman, whom I will actively follow in future; in field boots and a battered flight jacket, he makes a sandy, rangy Iago, sweet-talking and scoffing from his blue-eyed coyote's face; he convinces as his comrades' "honest Iago" in part because it seems paranoid to suspect anyone so loudmouthed and physically lively—and unsparing in his sarcasm—of the stealthy hatreds and stratagems that his name is a byword for. Even in soliloquy, he is never sinister, except perhaps for the admiration with which he pronounces, as if naming himself, Divinity of hell! But when he takes center stage, the wires that track from various points of the set all converge on him, at the heart of the web. He catches the spotlight and hurls it across the audience, playing with our attention as he will grandmaster the other characters to their downfall. And he is visibly the elder of Jason Bowen's Othello, an old campaigner who has been vaulted by the meteoric Moor and then his lieutenant Cassio; whatever rationale he tips to the audience or throws out to his dupe Roderigo or refuses to offer to his judges in the end, we might as well believe it a kind of boredom, the exercise and proof of his soldier's skill. He too can plan and carry off as shattering a victory as his general's over the Turks. Wounded, threatened with torture, with no more rue or resentment than before, he laughs: Demand me nothing: what you know, you know. I'd cast him as Snorri Sturluson's Loki.For the rest of the cast, I appreciated very much that Brooke Hardman's Desdemona was neither a sacrificial victim nor a child-bride china doll; she is chaste and true, but neither of those qualities annuls her passion, her playfulness, and the strength of mind with which she fights for her love and her life, even in the shock of murderous jealousy. (Nor was she fair-haired, which made a nice change from the traditional contrast.) As Cassio, Michael Forden Walker showed off the ambiguities in his clean-cut lieutenant with a drunk scene that shifted from comical to violent in two shots of vodka and a sequence of meetings with Bianca, passionate twinings after which he carefully blots off his lover's lipstick, containing himself back into his reputation again. Paula Langton simply rocked as Emilia: seen first for a single scene as the casually confident Duke of Venice, she plays thereafter a woman terribly without power, still hoping against years of evidence otherwise that the proper obedience, service, support will return her abusive husband's love to her, as once she must have known it to speak so bitterly of men's inconstancy. Her exposure of his double-dealing is at once the healthiest and the most fatal decision she could make, and this production does not smooth over the fact that while Othello's murder of his wife is a crime of passion, Iago's is a split-second calculation to save his own skin. Which brings me to Othello, without whom all the Desdemonas and Iagos from Stratford to Singapore will not make a production: I think what I liked best about Bowen was (ironically, because it made the later scenes so much more difficult to watch) the quiet sunniness with we first observe him interacting with his wife, his ancient, his lieutenant, his men, which is not the same as naïveté. He is, genuinely, by nature not a jealous man; coveting no one else's position, he has no radar for the behavior in others. And yet the violence he offers Iago for slandering his wife's name is the same violence he will work upon her, obverse-reverse; we are all coins that can be turned to show one face or the other, or both at once as we spin. The set reflected this, in light and dark puzzle pieces that I would swear changed between scenes. Nor I neither by this heavenly light—I might do't as well i' the dark.
I think there are three shows left before the production closes; I'd catch one if I were you. In the meantime, since I have to get up at ridiculous o'clock, I'm going to sleep.
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Nine
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Thank you for the opportunity.
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One thing I'm curious about with productions of this play. In what spirit did Othello tell of his wooing of Desdemona? We know that there are no men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, and I'm pretty sure that Shakespeare did too. Does Othello? Do the senators to whom he's speaking? Did Desdemona? Who is patronizing who, who is being winked at ("You know, gentlemen, that this kind of rhodomontade is necessary to win a young lady's love") - who's in on the joke? Or is his a world where such wonders actually exist?
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You're very welcome!
In what spirit did Othello tell of his wooing of Desdemona?
Like a tall tale he's recounting for the Senators, but not as if he deceived Desdemona with it; he delivered "This to hear / Would Desdemona seriously incline" with the modern inflection of seriously, as if the craziest parts of the story were her favorites. This Othello's world was ours in the vague near future, mostly I think so that we could have Venice as a multicultural police state; unless it had mutants or something we never heard about, it contained no more (or fewer) wonders than ours.
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Excellent review, great line (one of many) -- a line that all by itself forcefully reminded me of and illuminated a pivotal moment in the Ægypt cycle, where the dead-eyed counterman at a Conurbana drugstore soda fountain flips a quarter in change through the air at Pierce Moffett, and Pierce, tracking the spinning quarter's arc, watches open-mouthed as, for a second split wide, it stops spinning and hangs frozen in the air, before just as suddenly reacquiring its spin to land loudly on the countertop -- and I knew when I first read it that the entire four-volume novel pivots around that very moment, and however much my certainty as to that fact has never since been so great, the positively hair-raising sensation I had in that moment ranks amongst the most profound of all my readerly experiences. And all in a rush you brought it back, and I saw the many flung coins of light flashing free of that singular spinning coin in a whole new way. "Thank you" doesn't even begin to say it.
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Thank you for showing me this turn of the coin, too!
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You're welcome. It was a wonderful production!
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I have seen, I think, four productions by the Actors' Shakespeare Company; they have ranged from quite good (Much Ado About Nothing) to heartstopping (The Duchess of Malfi). No matter what they're doing, I go when I have the money and read the reviews wistfully when I don't. Although I am planning to make an effort for Timon of Athens in May—no one ever does that one.
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!
Also, !!
Hmmm.
---L.
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Which kind of hmmm is that?
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---L.
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Brush up your Shakespeare,
Start quoting him now.
Brush up your Shakespeare
And the women you will wow.
Just declaim a few lines from "Othella"
And they think you're a heckuva fella.
If your blonde won't respond when you flatter 'er
Tell her what Tony told Cleopaterer,
And if still, to be shocked, she pretends well,
Just remind her that "All's Well That Ends Well."
Brush up your Shakespeare
And they'll all kowtow.
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And they'll all kowtow.
Think'st thou?
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I hope that getting up at ridiculous o'clock was as pleasant as getting up at ridiculous o'clock can be, and that you have a good weekend.
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Ridiculous o'clock this morning was canceled, but tomorrow is going to be fun . . .
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I hope that you didn't miss anything enjoyable by the cancellation of ridiculous o'clock, and I hope that tomorrow is indeed fun in the literal, rather than the sarcastic sense.
I'm just home from the Easter Vigil, and am glad that I am not in the choir and am, therefore, not getting up early tomorrow morning, as my mother is doing.