Off Broadway’s Bedlam troupe returns to its bare-bones theatermaking roots with a production of Othello that requires its four-person cast to double (and triple and quadruple) up to play 19 different characters. There’s a big question that hangs heavily over director Eric Tucker’s frequently insightful but sometimes lumbering production: Why?
If you’re not familiar with this problematic Shakespeare tragedy, this stripped down, modern-dress revival is not a good introduction. There are multiple scenes where it’s unclear which character is speaking — particularly since the actors seldom do much to alter their costume, voice, or physical bearing when switching roles. (One exception is Ryan Quinn, who turns the blue button-down he wears as Othello into a shawl around his elbows and effects an exaggeratedly fey voice when playing Cassio’s low-class lover Bianca.) It’s also unclear what is gained by streamlining the cast in this way. Yes, there are some parallels in seeing Susannah Hoffman morph from Othello’s wronged love, the guileless trad wife Desdemona, into his wronged lieutenant Cassio — but the actress is also tasked with playing Desdemona’s knee-jerk racist father, Brabantio, which she does mostly by scowling.
For those familiar with the material, Tucker introduces several interesting ideas about the text without significant trims (the show runs a full three hours, with intermission). His Iago is less a malevolent schemer than a fast-talking con artist, maintaining a steady patter as well plausible deniability about his true intentions. Quinn convincingly portrays how the even-keeled general, who keeps his head bowed during Brabantio’s vituperative attacks on his character, gradually falls under the sway of Iago’s manipulative hints of infidelity between his wife and Cassio that fester into a green-eyed jealous rage.
Later, Quinn literally convulses into a hand-shaking, word-slurring seizure — “My lord is fall’n into an epilepsy,” Iago remarks — that marks his full transition from reasonable military commander into a trainee under the blind command of the jealousy Iago has manufactured. As with many Bedlam productions, there’s a benefit to the physical intimacy of the performance space — particularly in the second act, when the seating risers have been moved to created an in-the-round arena. We see Quinn’s epileptic convulsions up close, as well as the fateful battles that unfold in the dark, often lit only by handheld flashlights.
Not all the gambits work. Cassio’s drunk scene is played as an awkward karaoke, with Tucker using a laser pointer to point out the lyrics scrawled on the theater’s back wall as Hoffman slurs her way through a tavern song. Most of the acts of violence — from Cassio’s alcohol-fueled brawl with Roderigo (Susannah Millonzi) to Othello’s slapping of Desdemona’s face — are pantomimed with the antagonists at a distance of six feet or more, accompanied by foot-stomping or hand claps by Tucker’s Iago. But then Othello’s climactic killing of Desdemona is a full-contact horror: Hoffman desperately tries to wriggle free from Quinn’s clutches until he wrestles her into a chokehold and finishes the deed. It’s graphic, shockingly so, in part because all of the preceding violence had been so prim, abstracted, and untriggering.
Each performer has standout moments. Hoffman is particularly good at capturing Desdemona’s flustered confusion at being falsely accused of adultery without turning either strident or shrill. Millonzi movingly delivers servant Emilia’s broad indictment of men and defense of women owning their sexuality. And Quinn nicely calibrates Othello’s military authority and the hot temper that Iago brings out in him (though he becomes too shouty in the show’s second half).
Despite a pre-curtain call voiceover from James Baldwin — “You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be” — the Bedlam production doesn’t foreground the inherent racism in Shakespeare’s complicated but still resonant tragedy. In the end, I wish Tucker had gone further to streamline the text and make it resonate more clearly to modern audiences, or to provide a consistent framework (like that Baldwin quote) that carried through the whole show. With so few actors playing so many roles, it’s harder to identify with any one of them for very long, to put ourselves in their shoes and imagine how we too might become that monster. ★★★☆☆
OTHELLO
West End Theatre, Off Broadway
Running time: 3 hours (with one intermission)
Tickets on sale through May 31 for $87