This month (October), Mer is leading a field trip for all the 11th grade and her AP English classes to go up to Cleveland to see Great Lakes Theater’s production of Othello. Othello is the Shakespeare play of choice for all 11th grade English classes, and Mer likes to let her AP students in on any literary field trips that she organizes. Last year, we went to Great Lakes to see Twelfth Night, and the production was very good, but had a few moments of crude or sexual gestures in the production that were not mandated by the text. Since we are accountable to CVCA parents, Mer mentioned those issues from last year to the box office when she arranged for the trip to see Othello. The theater people assured her this production would be fine, and sent her two tickets to see a preview performance of the play so that Mer could make sure. That preview performance was last week on Friday (the 24th), and I got to go along.

We headed up early because there was a talk-back with the producer and the director, and Mer and I enjoy those things. The producer talked about how the company wanted to do Othello, but that it depended on finding an actor who could play Othello, and how that came about (short version – the producer saw an actor he admired in Arizona). The director talked about some of the challenges of directing Othello, and brought out two of her main ideas for the play. She made the decision that the villain of the play, Iago, was going to be motivated to be evil by his being passed up for a promotion by Othello. Iago gives at least five or six reasons during the play as to why he is so twisted, and being passed up is given as only one reason, which the director choose to emphasize. She also wanted to stress Othello’s being human, and fallible, and to make him a sympathetic character, even at the end of the play after he has murdered Desdemona because he thinks she was unfaithful to him. It was interesting to hear the director bring these out, because I could then watch for those themes in the play. I thought her vision for Othello being sympathetic was more obvious on stage and so worked better; the motivation for Iago did not seem to hold so well since Iago himself contradicts it at several points.

The director made the decision to set Othello in modern times, and for the most part this worked quite well. Othello and his troops wore modern-day military uniforms. Instead of swords, most of the men carried long knives. Desdemona’s father, an important senator, was guarded by sunglasses-wearing bodyguards with retractable batons. That forced the director to lose a wonderful set of lines of Othello’s, where he tells his men and the bodyguards to “Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust ’em.” Still, since the director wanted to make Othello more approachable as a man, the updating helped that very much.

The set of the play was simple but effective. There was a background that changed so you knew where the setting of the play was. In the middle of the stage was a frame of steel that took up most of the middle of the stage. The framework held up a second level that was used to add dimensions to the play, and became whatever was called for (a second floor, battlements, etc.). It also defined a space inside the frame that became Othello and Desdemona’s bedroom for the last part of the play.

The actors did very well, especially the big three roles – Othello, Desdemona, and Iago. Those three were excellent. Desdemona was encouraged by the director to always be hopeful, even at the end of the play. Sometimes I saw that and sometimes I did not, but her character was still convincing. Othello was warm and likable for half the play, until he gets turned by Iago, and then his anger was deeply disturbing, as it supposed to be. Iago was convincing, taking delight in his evil plans, and then risking much to carry them out, although I’m still not convinced that his being passed over for promotion would make him quite so vicious. (I’m of the opinion that Shakespeare did not worry too much about Iago’s backstory and just presented him as a very competent but evil man).

I thought the end of the play was particularly strong. Desdemona’s friend and the wife of Iago, Emilia, was finally played as a tortured woman. Mer wrote a long paper on how usually Emilia is presented as a good and loving and faithful friend to Desdemona, and they have a long scene together which most productions present as almost fun-loving “girl talk.” Mer’s point is that Emilia knows that much trouble has come from her finding an important handkerchief of Desdemona’s, and she gave that handkerchief to her husband, which unknown to her he uses for his own destructive purposes. Othello then later demands it (he has become convinced that his wife has given it to her lover), and Emilia sees Othello get enraged by the lack of the handkerchief, and yet she says nothing. She has several opportunities to say something to Desdemona, and never does. This production choose to have that doubt and guilt play out in an Emilia who has quick mood swings and is quick to tears in the final “girl talk” scene. It worked wonderfully and was much more compelling than other productions I have seen. Desdemona has a premonition that bad things are coming, and Emilia keeps trying to distract her from those feelings, all the while trying to keep her own emotions and thoughts under control.

The final bedroom scene was very effective. As Othello enters, the back wall of the stage moves with him, which makes the bedroom get even more claustrophobic. The entire play has been working to this point, and the director pulls the space in even more. The actors playing Othello and Desdemona both poured much emotion into the final scene, and it was as emotionally painful as it always has been in every production I have ever seen. I find Othello to be Shakespeare’s most desperate tragedy, and it may very well be because Othello is approachable and so human. Anyway, as an interesting text-based action that I had never seen before, Othello wraps his wife in her wedding sheets and puts her on the floor at the front of the stage. Desdemona had asked Emilia to wrap her in her sheets if she should die soon. When Emilia comes in and finds her friend dead, she raises the alarm, people rush in, and everything is exposed. Emilia is killed by her husband Iago, and Emilia falls down next to Desdemona, also at the front of the stage. This is unusual in that the text suggests strongly that they die on the bed and stay there, but this left the bed empty. Iago flees, and in an effective and unusual move, everyone chases him except Othello. He is left completely alone with the bodies of his wife and of Emilia. It was the most practical moment of the director’s vision to have us focus on Othello. All the people return with the captured Iago, and the play ends with Othello killing himself very suddenly with a pistol he had hidden in his shoe, the only firearm in the entire play. Othello falls back onto the bed (which is why it was empty), and he landed in the form of a cross, which I’m pretty sure was deliberate. While Othello is not a traditional Christ-figure in that he does not sacrifice himself for the main characters, who were already dead, he does kill himself to protect “the state” of Venice and to protect his own honor. What is odd for me is that the director cut the lines that suggest that Othello needed to protect the state from people like himself. My guess is that the director wanted Othello to be very human at the end and not to make mention of his exalted military history.

So, the play was excellent. I am glad I got to see it, although I told Mer I would not go see a preview and go to see the field trip production. I find Othello too emotionally engaging to see it twice in four weeks. This production also wrapped up my and Mer’s Summer o’ Shakespeare – this is the seventh and final production of Shakespeare that we have seen in the last three months.