Review: Othello by Austin Shakespeare
by Michael Meigs
It is good -- very good -- to see Marc Pouhé back on the Austin stage. Tall, commanding, well-spoken and assured, he made a deep impression on theatre goers here back in 2008 and 2009 when appearing as Macbeth for Austin Shakespeare ("a formidable presence"), in The Three Sisters at Mary Moody Northen Theatre (anchoring "this lyric production. . . as a talkative, middle-aged lieutenant colonel. . . wistfully in love"), as a Dust Bowl preacher in the Zach Theatre's Grapes of Wrath ("great stature and depth"), and more. Nominations and awards abounded, but he withdrew from acting to deal with serious health problems.
Now fully re-established, Pouhé delivers a considerable amount of that same magic in this second appearance as Othello with Austin Shakespeare. I wasn't here to see his 2005 performance as the noble Moor, the outsider who zealously defends his adopted city of Venice but falls victim to the machinations of his malevolent subaltern Iago. Not obviously older than when first I saw him, Pouhé retains his physical predominance and presence, along with a certain satisfied corporality or embonpoint that suits Othello's character as senior commander.
He looms over the other leads, both physically and with his rich voice and vocal style. Sara Cormier is a diminutive and demure Desdemona who obviously delights at hanging onto this relative mountain of a man. Michael Miller as Iago, a head shorter than Pouhé, has a thin snarl and a dampened passionless voice with a curious waft of Buddy Hackett to it.
You could argue that the character Iago is esentially the protagonist of Shakespeare's Othello. Iago applies guile, lies and trickery to push his commander into jealous frenzy and disastrous action. He dupes Rodrigo, the disappointed suitor for Desdemona's hand, cons him of his wealth, incites him to murder and swiftly executes him in dead of night. Iago is written as a monster but Miller's restrained style does not generate the tension an audience might be expected to experience while witnessing the destruction of a great love and a great general.
Director Ann Ciccolella keeps the plot moving but stages it with a curiously soggy concept. Austin Shakespeare has regularly spun the Bard's works into new eras and localities, but this Othello takes place in a sort of Never-Never-Venice where characters are costumed in a mix of 19th-century British colonial (street wear and uniforms complete with pith helmets), elaborate court uniforms worthy of Ruritania, and cheap-looking light blue soldiers' tunics. Othello's a general but he's always dressed in white, more appropriate for a naval officer or for formal court proceedings.
Keith Paxton as Othello's ousted lieutenant Michael Cassio delivers a sound performance but he seems about a decade too young for the role. James Byers as the gulled Rodrigo is unconvincing, principally because he's played as a clown, a great bumbling baby with round spectacles.
Equally unconvincing is Jason Amato's set design -- essentially a single high platform at center stage accessed via a full dozen steps at left and right. It serves well enough as a shelter or archway, but the tedious necessity to climb that long ascent delays action. The director posts actor-musician Nathan Brockett up there with his violin at the opening of each act, but for no obvious reason.
Keith Paxton as Othello's ousted lieutenant Michael Cassio delivers a sound performance but he seems about a decade too young for the role. James Byers as the gulled Rodrigo is unconvincing, principally because he's played as a clown, a great bumbling baby with round spectacles.
Equally unconvincing is Jason Amato's set design -- essentially a single high platform at center stage accessed via a full dozen steps at left and right. It serves well enough as a shelter or archway, but the tedious necessity to climb that long ascent delays action. The director posts actor-musician Nathan Brockett up there with his violin at the opening of each act, but for no obvious reason.
Only in the moments that lead up to the fatal bedroom scene might the design prove useful: Othello enters stage right, deliberately ascends, pauses and then, determined, comes down the stage left flight of stairs, moves behind the apparatus, and appears in the bedroom to begin that haunting soliloquy, "It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,-- Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!-- It is the cause."
The staging problem is that while Pouhé is silently signaling his decision, stage hands are trundling Desdemona and bed on through that central arch, setting it into place and scurrying away like mice.
Amato likes to paint with light, and this production is no exception. He's got a couple of unexplained triangular panels hanging behind that platform that he uses for projections not terribly helpful to the action. At one point they're repositioned for no obvious reason. When director Ciccolella brings key characters downstage center for intimate conference or soliloquy, Amato sends a low-wattage wash of yellow-green forward from devices hung under that platform. This creates an aesthetically agreeable pool of light suggesting intimacy but those beams bounce from the playing floor, reflecting into the eyes of spectators in the front rows.
The last acts of this Othello provide the very best moments of the production. Johanna Whitmore as Emilia, Iago's wife and Desdemona's lady-in-waiting, is warmly affectionate and loyal as she takes her farewell. The later bedroom scene powerfully portrays Othello's misguided attempt at earthly justice and Desdemona's panic as the uncomprehending, wronged innocent. We're moved and appalled to see the noble soldier destroy his love.
Emila's distress at this catastrophe and her adamant rebukes are plot devices, yes, but Whitmore gives them depth and fury.
And we do have the hollow comfort of seeing Iago revealed, seized and wounded unto death.
Othello
by William Shakespeare
Austin Shakespeare
