The Globe and Mail - November 6, 1997

"Langham's Othello sharp, swift, rewarding"
Kate Taylor

'I hate the Moor," Iago explodes, suddenly bringing loud violence to a hitherto temperate place. So veteran director Michael Langham boldly juxtaposes the darkness of Shakespeare's Othello against the sexy sunniness he has built up in the first scenes of his new production for Edmonton's Citadel Theatre and Ottawa's National Arts Centre.

But having so clearly established the obvious black and white of the play, Langham then adds a multitude of other shades and hues. Designer Douglas Paraschuk clothes the thrust stage of the Citadel's Maclab Theatre with a few simple outfits -- the great general's flapping sail and his lush tent. The cast, often quietly compelling, sometimes merely understated, are dressed in proud Napoleonic costumes. But the real purpose here is the language: it's a reading of Othello that is sharp, swift and rewarding. Langham, the veteran British director whose extensive Canadian credits include his early years at Stratford and more recent work at the Atlantic Theatre Festival in Wolfville, N.S., is renowned for his ability to reveal the text. He is a conservative who does not heap on interpretation but rather clears away confusion, showing his actors how to render up the 400-year-old words.

It's an approach well suited not only to the new Wolfville festival but also to the Citadel, where artistic director Duncan McIntosh wants to build a resident company: this Othello is training his actors well. And, for all its common sense, the approach has a wonderfully invigorating effect for an audience, a freshness that can leave a critic unnecessarily scribbling down Shakespeare's own lines, so clearly do they strike the ear.

To begin with Stuart Hughes's Iago -- and the first acts of this play have always belonged to its villain rather than its hero -- we are presented with a curiously likable fellow. Hughes makes him quicker, wittier and more energetic than those around him, an operator whose activism and cynicism are not without their charms. With their aristocratic profiles and delighted love, Desdemona and Othello are heroic figures, and heroes are often bland; Iago is the more interesting and even more perceptive character. After all, as Langham reminds us by underlining the repeated ironies Shakespeare threads through his lines, this great dissembler is often perversely the truth teller. It is Iago who warns Othello that jealousy is a green-eyed monster and informs the much-wronged Cassio that good reputation is often got without merit.

Here, the striking Othello created by American actor Allen Gilmore and Megan Follows's simple-hearted Desdemona are visibly, physically in love. From there, Iago's envy emerges not merely as bad but as a slanted way of looking at the world, wrong but not without a grain of truth. Does he accuse Desdemona of infidelity with Cassio? Well, this Cassio, stoically rendered by Stephen Pelinski, does indeed linger a little too long kissing her hand. Does Iago believe all women are faithless? Well, Jane Spidell, belatedly warming to what is otherwise a rather awkward rendition of Iago's wife Emilia, does concede that there might be some prizes for which one would cheat on a husband.

Langham illustrates Iago's position when Othello and Desdemona kiss. As he sees them, Iago turns to Emilia and voyeuristically and violently apes the other couple, but on his lips a kiss is no kindness. His jealousy, his misogyny and his cynicism are blindingly illuminated. What makes this Othello and Desdemona so likable -- their joyous sexuality -- he merely sees as dirty. Shakespeare never worried much over Iago's motivations, but Hughes makes him a plausible figure, always finding nasty faults in others' innocent pleasures. He would be a good contributor to Frank magazine.

And if Hughes is no cackling villain, neither is Gilmore's Othello a mighty madman. From his initial energetic dignity, he reveals his first moments of doubt as to Desdemona's fidelity with one wrinkle appearing across his brow and a new stoop to his shoulders. As Iago's poison takes hold, he is often pathetic, more saddening in his jealousy than frightening, until he suddenly slaps Desdemona, a moment that jolts this production with a flash of that hard yet familiar crime: domestic violence.

Gilmore betrays real madness only in the final moments of the play before proceeding to suffocate his lively bride, who kicks and struggles to the end. Follows, too, is easily recognizable, making the patient and puzzled Desdemona an abused wife trying above all to keep her husband calm.

Today Othello is often read as a social tragedy: the Moor is a victim of a racist society that will not support his mixed marriage. But the play is, of course, originally a moral tragedy in which a grotesque evil poisons the good. Staged that way, however, it risks becoming a parody: The last time Stratford did Othello, Scott Wentworth's Iago all but twirled his mustachios at the audience.

Langham's achievement is to make the relationship of good and evil hugely convincing without having to impose a contemporary reading. For all the great divisions he occasions, this Iago emerges as a man with a dirty little mind -- it is not, after all, an uncommon affliction.

Source: The Globe and Mail