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by William Shakespeare, directed by Chris Abraham

Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford

August 14-October 19, 2013

Iago: “Were I the Moor I would not be Iago.

            In following him I follow but myself”

The Stratford Festival’s seventh staging of Shakespeare’s Othello is one of this season’s most handsome productions.  Julie Fox’s design and Michael Walton’s lighting beautifully work in concert to create a world inhabited by shadows.  Director Chris Abraham stages the action with variety and imagination.  His decisions, however, regarding the characters of Othello, Desdemona and Iago, do not allow the actors to explore their characters fully.

Ever since Dion Johnstone joined the Stratford Festival company seven years ago, I have been looking forward to the time he would play Othello.  His versatility, his intensity, his command of Shakespearean verse have made him a major asset at the Festival.  What a pity, then, that when Johnstone’s turn to play this iconic role arrives that Abraham saddles him with an African accent.  The concept makes no sense.  When Shakespeare asks for an accent, as with the Welshman Fluellen, he signals it in his spelling and vocabulary choices.  Othello has done the Venetian Republic service for years and his skin colour, as far as the play is concerned, is difference enough.  When Othello speaks slowly and quietly, the accent is not such a barrier, but when Othello shouts or speaks rapidly, as he does increasingly in the play, the accent makes much of what Johnstone says incomprehensible.  My pity for Johnstone was matched by my anger at Abraham for sabotaging what would have otherwise been an extraordinarily powerful performance. 

Bethany Jillard is not an ideal Desdemona.  Abraham has picked up on the various references to Desdemona’s youth and has chosen Jillard presumably because she looks so youthful.  There is, however, more to the character than sweet innocence.  Desdemona, after all, defied her father in marrying Othello and manages to control herself at the public ceremony that follows Othello’s berating her as a whore.  We also have to see that she has strength of will and a command of self.  Jillard is very good at portraying Desdemona’s innocence and obedience, but does not capture her other qualities.  While she speaks Shakespeare’s verse well, she speaks with a flat, uninflected voice that can’t convey all the nuances of Shakespeare’s words.

Graham Abbey gives a riveting performance as Iago, but he is confined by Abraham’s narrow conception of the role.  The key question that every director must answer is what drives Iago to wreak so much destruction on all those around him.  Abraham harks back to the Romantics’ view of Iago and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s remark (c.1819) that Iago represented “motiveless malignity”.  Following this antique view, Abraham decides to have Abbey portray Iago as a sociopath.  When Othello falls into an epileptic fit, Abraham has Abbey stand over Johnstone doing nothing to help him and displaying a completely blank expression.  Later when Iago is confronted with the bodies littering Desdemona’s bedroom, Abraham has Abbey show no emotion whatsoever. 

While Abbey is supremely effective in his depiction of Iago as a sociopath, Abraham’s concept itself is a cop-out.  Iago gives several motives for his behaviour – being passed over by Othello for the lieutenancy, prejudice against black people, the belief that Othello somehow has slept with his wife Emilia, the belief that Cassio has slept with Emilia and the feeling that Cassio’s handsomeness makes Iago look ugly.  The very fact that Iago keeps stating new reasons for his behaviour should suggest that he does not really know himself why he acts as he does.  This constant shifting of motives should suggest that Iago is more of a weak person seeking revenge on the world for his own inadequacies.  As the marvellous RSC production in 2000 made so clear, it is Iago rather than Othello who is the character most consumed by jealousy. 

This leads to the second problem with Abraham’s depiction of Iago as in control of the situation from first to last.  A close reading of he text shows that he is not.  Just has Iago keeps changing his motives for what he does, he keeps improvising how he will wreak his revenge.  By the end of Act 3 he has the lieutenancy that he claims was all he wanted at the start of the play – except that he has begun so many plots that they have become the master of him not he their master.  To prevent his being found out he has to kill Roderigo, Cassio and Emilia – nothing he had originally envisaged.  Just before the final scene Iago says, “This is the night That either makes me or fordoes me quite” – not the statement of a man in control or of a sociopath who believes in his own superiority.   A much richer characterization of Iago is therefore more akin to a man like Macbeth, who, frighteningly to him and to us, loses control of a situation he has created and becomes one of its victims.

Of the four major characters the one who shines most is Deborah Hay as Emilia.  Abraham makes Emilia’s bond of trust and support for Desdemona the model of relations between a master and her servant that contrasts with the struggle among the men to fill the role of “second” to the master Othello.  Hay shows Emilia’s distress early on at Iago’s uncouth speech and behaviour, but when she pieces together the truth in the final scene, she rails against Iago with a mixture of hatred a sorrow that is breath-taking in its vehemence. 

Brad Hodder creates a very positive impression as Cassio, a good man, well aware of his weaknesses, but tempted to indulge them by Iago.  As Roderigo, Mike Shara is stuck again playing one of Shakespeare’s many foolish characters.  Shara has playing the naive idiot down to an art, but in his final confrontation with Iago, he shows that when love for Desdemona no longer blinds him Roderigo is capable of seeing the truth about Iago and expresses it with outrage.  Peter Hutt is a blustery Brabantio, Shauna Black a shrill Bianca and Gareth Potter an ineffectual Lodovico.  At least Stephen Russell has the gravitas to play the Duke of Venice effectively.

Designer Julie Fox has clad the cast in elaborate period costume but her design for the set is stark and modern.  This works well because the simplicity of the set serves as a foil for the costumes.  The set consists of two blood-red walls that move to form a corner or long wall or separate to create an entrance.  Centre-stage is a raised square, also blood-red, tilted on the diagonal to suggest a world off-kilter.  It can be turned round to suggest numerous locations, most imaginatively Othello’s boat caught in a storm on its way to Cyprus. 

Working in tandem with the movements of the set is Michael Walton’s lighting.  Walton often sets lamps low to the for so that the characters cast huge shadows on the walls of the set – a simple but insightful way of emphasizing the imagery of light and dark in the play.  When Othello enters Desdemona’s bedchamber for their final encounter, Walton has Othello’s swinging, Moorish lantern serve as the only light, the swaying tracery of its shadows suggesting a complete loss of stability.

If only Abraham had shown as much insight into the text as Fox and Walton do, this might have been the first great Othello Stratford has ever presented.  As it is, Abraham’s direction uses a simplistic method to solve one of the prime sources of the play’s complexity, and in so doing it makes the play a less than satisfying experience.  In an ideal world, Dion Johnstone and Graham Abbey should have a second chance to play Othello and Iago – this time with a director who allows them to express the multiple ambiguities of Shakespeare’s language.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: (top) Graham Abbey and Dion Johnstone; (middle) Deborah Hay and Bethany Jillard. ©2013 Michael Cooper.