With its prominent themes of war and racism, there is ample opportunity today to stage Othello in a way that makes it “of our time.” But John Langs’s emotionally rich production of Shakespeare’s play is more elemental and timeless. This is a love story, first and foremost—albeit one that ends tragically.
Langs begins the play not with talk of regimental politics, but with the wedding ceremony of Othello and Desdemona, staged with beautiful romantic simplicity. Here, silently, Chiké Johnson (Othello) and Laura Rook (Desdemona) establish the depth of their passionate love with mute innocence. So when we hear Othello later tell of the “drugs, charms, conjuration and mighty magic” that lies at the heart of their romance, we already feel it deeply.
To nudge Othello in this direction, Langs needs a Desdemona that can add substance to one of Shakespeare’s most thinly written roles. Rook delivers by giving the young wife both snap and smarts (she’s as much Rosalind from All’s Well That Ends Well as Juliet), and Langs’s marriage ceremony prologue—the lovers here are both blissful and bashful—allows us to see the deep connection between them, and makes the story all the more tragic.
Enter Iago (James Ridge) who drives the play from this moment of romantic euphoria to its bloody conclusion. True to Langs’s approach, Ridge’s schemer is not as much evil incarnate as seasoned military man who knows how to game the system in his favor. It’s all a matter of strategy to him, and Langs shows this brilliantly by staging the crucial exchange between Othello and Iago as a friendly fencing match. Iago knows that his revenge is a matter of subtle manipulation rather than brute force, and each parry and thrust brings this home. Like any great Iago, Ridge ingratiates himself to the audience—at one point offering someone in the front row a bottle of wine, as if he were parsing out his strategy over a friendly drink. But here, his plot depends on his image as The Good Soldier.
While Ridge’s Iago is ever-purposeful, Johnson’s Othello is ever-torn. While Johnson stirs with palpable rage as Iago’s lies take hold, he seems to never lose the memory of those first moments of wedded contentment. Even as he’s fulfilling his violent destiny, his hands around his wife’s throat, his memory seems to battle his vengeful resolve. As the bodies pile up in the final scene, there’s no doubt that evil triumphs, but Langs’s terrific production makes it clear that love doesn’t give up too easily.
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As the lights come up on the watercolor radiance of Edward Albee’s Seascape (courtesy of designers Jeffrey Kmiec, Devon Painter, and Jesse Klug), a lone clarinet plays the refrain of Beyond the Sea (sound design by Joe Cerqua). But this is no Bobby Darin hotcha version of Charles Trenet’s melody. Fitting Edward Albee’s 1975 portrait of a marriage “of a certain age,” the melody is slow, bittersweet, even a bit mournful.
You can imagine that the tune is accompanying the melancholy thoughts of Charlie (Jonathan Smoots) as he lies on the beach, staring up at the sky. While his wife, Nancy (Sarah Day), paints her own watercolor—and dreams out loud of the couple’s post-retirement life ahead—Charlie seems more at sea than on shore. And the deafening roar of an overhead jet plane seems to embody the existential rumble that plagues his soul.
Albee is the master of capturing midlife ennui and the torpor that can overtake long-term relationships, and Seascape is every bit as insightful and keenly observed as his better-known masterpieces, A Delicate Balance and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Day, Smoots, and director Laura Gordon—who staged the play in 2007 at the Milwaukee Rep—find both the excellent music of Albee’s dialogue, and create vivid characters who opt for different paths at the “mid-life” fork in the road. Nancy sees freedom—travel, adventure—but Charlie sees it as the beginning of the end. And their conversation—in typical Albee fashion—embraces both the mundane intimacies of a shared life, and the big questions at the core of human existence.
What happens in Act Two is perhaps not typical Albee, but it is nonetheless a brilliant technique of digging deeper into Charlie and Nancy’s existential conflict by stripping away some of the couple’s most basic assumptions about their future. Sarah (Cristina Panfilio) and Leslie (LaShawn Banks) are a pair not unlike Charlie and Nancy—long-coupled parents enjoying the peace and sunshine of the beach. Happening in on the conversation, they get something of an education. And it’s here that Albee makes his coup de gras, showing how one commonplace can be shattering to someone who isn’t prepared to hear it. Panfilio handles the moment with devastating depth of feeling, one of the many moments of Gordon’s production that will stay with you long after you leave the theater.
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The Merry Wives of Windsor is the Shakespeare comedy that gets no respect. It’s usually dismissed as an average play, written because Queen Elizabeth requested another evening with Fat Jack Falstaff. But the American Player’s Theatre production–which I just saw this weekend even though it opened in June–shows there is life in this old play yet.
It turns out the delight is in the details. While director Tim Ocel delivers the manic pleasures of the play’s comic set pieces–which generally involve Falstaff making a fool of himself in pursuit of the eponymous wives, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page (played with charm by Deborah Staples and Colleen Madden). But the true joys here are found in the inventive work of the supporting cast, like Eric Parks’ endearingly befuddled Simple, who can barely get through a conversation without confusion, but nonetheless ends each encounter with a heartfelt hug. Or the hilariously pathetic Abraham Slender (Robert R. Doyle), an Elizabethan nerd of delicious dorkiness. And Jonathan Smoots’ Dr. Caius, a foppish Frenchman who could easily be the inspiration for Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau.
And then there’s the Fat Man himself, played with tour-de-force ease by Brian Mani. It’s a role that can easily tempt an actor into excesses–schtick, not merely poundage–but Mani’s Falstaff is decidedly lived-in. He delivers priceless lines–“I have a kind of alacrity in sinking”–without a wink, verbal italics, or any manner of excessive flourish. And the same can be said of his character tics. I’m sure he’s not the first actor to have made gas-passing a part of Falstaff’s comic vocabulary, but Mani makes the most of it by not making much of it: a little squirm in his chair, the straightening of a leg, a slight twitch in the face. No big deal. But it is echt Falstaffian—the behavior of a man so assured in his brand of humanity—excesses and all—that he creates his own rules of politesse.
