Truthfully Told Berkeley's 'Othello" Faithfully Dramatizes the Downfall of the Tragically Faithless Man
San Jose Mercury News
"Othello" is a triangular play: the Moor of Venice at the apex, facing the
embodiments of good and evil, Desdemona and Iago.
It is so simple and so powerful a work that one need say little else about it.
The names of its characters, long since passed into common parlance, are
enough: Othello, a good man with the fatal flaw of trusting so well that he
becomes credulous; Desdemona, innocent and loving, a natural wellspring of
joy and healing; Iago, a villain of arbitrary, unmotivated cruelty.
Berkeley Shakespeare Festival's production, directed by Michael Addison, does
"Othello" the immense favor of taking it at face value. It's honorable, complete
and clear. It is set in the original period (no dislocations of time and space),
and the text is king.
Casting on cue
The company is well cast throughout, starting -- and ending -- with the
handsome and amoral Iago of Peter A. Jacobs. (This must be the only
Shakespeare play in which the villain proudly displays his true colors right at
the start, in line 5, to be exact.) His chillingly pleasant Iago shows how small
are his grievances: an expected promotion that went instead to Cassio, a
rumor that Othello has debauched Iago's wife, Emilia, so trumped-up that Iago
shrugs it off even as he relates it.
There is no tragic motivation here, as in Brutus' conspiracy against Caesar or
Macbeth's loyalty corrupted by ambition. Iago is just petty and ugly, a moral
arsonist who enjoys putting a match to something beautiful for the sake of
watching it burn away.
Shakespeare rubs in the irony with no fewer than 13 references to "honest
Iago." (Othello actually defends him to Emilia -- over Desdemona's body -- as
"My friend, thy husband, honest, honest Iago.") The center of the play is a
long, subtly written seduction scene in which Iago corrupts Othello's love by
introducing him to the "green-eyed monster," jealousy, and Jacobs plays it
with the understatement of a true virtuoso.
In the title role, Bob Devin Jones wrestles courageously with Othello's fallen
grandeur and wins a good number of points. Though his watery performances
last season made me wary of his capacity to take on this larger-than-life role,
he surprised me agreeably. He falls short only at the end, when Othello
realizes how terribly he has been misled: Instead of raging like a wounded
lion, Jones internalizes and tamps down his remorse.
The lovely Robin Goodrin Nordli (Jacobs' wife) shines like a good deed in a
naughty world as Desdemona -- the obverse of her Isabella in last season's
"Measure for Measure," whose purity was of the ice-and-ivory sort.
In supporting roles, John Bellucci makes Iago's weak-willed dupe, Roderigo,
into a memorable miniature. And Douglas Sills remembers that the brave and
soldierly Cassio is also fallible, with a fatal attraction to wine and courtesans.
The Mexican-American choreographer Jose Limon may have been the first to
see "Othello" as a triangle with four points, for "The Moor's Pavane," his 1949
dance-reduction of the drama, recognizes the pivotal importance of Emilia to
Iago's plot. Lura Dolas recognizes it, too. Her Emilia is a remarkable creation --
one of many by this protean performer, who switches from romantic to
character roles several times a season. Here she is wise and generous and a
little cynical, a fine foil for the luminous, uncomplicated virtue of Desdemona.
Music complements tragedy
Addison and his chosen composer, John Geist, are also aware of the play's
paradoxical geometry. Geist's string quartet score, played sweetly by the
Samaria String Quartet, has a kind of classical chastity about it that suits the
play's intimate tragedy.
Nancy Jo Smith's costumes in soft sunset colors and Eric E. Sinkkonen's
minimal scenery -- floor-to-ceiling velvet draperies that spill their skirts onto
the stage like wine or blood -- complete the production's simplicity of effect.
However, for a play that takes place largely at night, Kurt Landisman's lighting
is atypically prosaic, and no help at all in realizing the passage of time.
-Judith Green, San Jose Mercury News
July 13, 1990
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