Oh boy. I had a lot to potentially say about Othello. It may be the Shakespearean play I’ve taught the most over the course of my career. I’ve seen more than a few versions of it, including a great live one done by the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival with a stellar cast of local actors. The fellow playing Iago was particularly impressive in that his character bounced around the stage, changing his demeanor as he went. I could also relate an anecdote, hopefully apocryphal, about how a traveling show in America’s frontier saw a man shoot and kill an actor playing Iago because he didn’t realize it was all a play and not real. It’s a highly personal play and, done right, the most devastating of Shakespeare’s tragedies.
Then Anthony Hopkins beat out the late Chadwick Boseman for a Best Actor Oscar last night, and while I don’t much care about the Oscars in general, friends who watched the ceremony weren’t happy about that. What does any of that have to do with Othello? See below…
Notable cast members: If Antony and Cleopatra didn’t have much of anyone all that familiar in its cast, Othello really makes up for that. This play essentially requires three strong actors to hold down the main roles for the whole thing to work, and man, did they get some strong ones here. For Desdemona, there’s Penelope Wilton, an actress I recognize today for a lot of work ranging from Doctor Who to Shaun of the Dead to Downton Abbey. Especially the last one. Granted, she’s a bit older these days, so if I didn’t know it was her, I might not have recognized her. Plus, she looks a bit like Olivia Colman, and given Colman is roughly my age, well, it wasn’t Colman since I was about 7 in 1981.
As for the other two, well, there’s the late Bob Hoskins as a very working class Iago, and then there’s the aforementioned Anthony Hopkins, given a little bit of make-up to slightly darken his skin, as Othello. And about that…
Trivia: Initially, I was going to mention that the producers wanted American actor James Earl Jones for Othello, but there was a union contract that required the production to cast a British actor, so casting Jones would have meant an actor’s strike. Eventually, someone decided that race didn’t matter, so they cast Hopkins. My Britbox screening started with a title page explaining that Hopkins was the last white man to play Othello for British television. You know, in 1981. You mean they seriously couldn’t find a black actor in Britain in 1981? I could probably go off on a tangent here since there have been many productions to de-emphasize Othello’s race as a reason for Iago’s hatred, it is a little difficult if you examine the script and see the frequent references to Othello’s nationality, skin tone, and general appearance. If anything, there are worse make-up jobs than what Hopkins displays here. I mean, just go look up Lawrence Olivier’s look when he did a movie version of this play…
Also, maybe it’s been a while since I watched these, but I don’t recall any of these having an intermission before.
The play: OK, let’s set aside the whole white-man-playing-Othello thing for just a moment. There is a strong central trio here with Hoskins, Hopkins, and Wilton as the three leads. We can still have a good production. Plus, if the producers really were trying to say race wasn’t the reason, Hopkins is a good choice since he doesn’t look that different from anyone else. Plus, Iago famously never gives a reason to do what he does. Or, more accurately, he gives a couple and that tends to negate his stated reasons, and if he really just hated Othello, why do his plans hurt other people as well? There was no reason to want Desdemona dead, Cassio wounded in the street and maybe left to die, or Roderigo robbed blind if he only hated Othello. He does a lot of wrong by a lot of people who don’t know he isn’t anyone’s friend.
It’s like I sometimes joke: the Othello Drinking Game would mean take a drink anytime anyone refers to Othello as a Moor or Iago as honest, including themselves. You’ll be dead of alcohol poisoning before Act III.
After all, Iago claims he is angry Othello passed him up for a promotion in favor of a booksmart but inexperienced young Michael Cassio, or he thinks Othello slept with Iago’s own wife Emlia (something she laughs off later as untrue), or just to prove his own superiority to others. Which reason is it? All of them and none of them. He just wants it done because he hates Othello for some reason.
Iago’s inventiveness drives the play. This is a man who can tell a different story to a different person, and as long as they don’t stop to compare notes, he can get away with anything. That was an observation I’ve made for years and played for laughs in American humor novelist Christopher Moore’s take on this play (combined with The Merchant of Venice and of all things. Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado”) where every time Iago gets Othello wound up with rage, someone uses some common sense to talk him down, ending the novel with Othello and Desdemona still happily married.
Granted, characters using common sense and comparing notes is what ultimately foils Iago when Othello repeats one of Iago’s lies to Emilia, and she sees exactly what has happened to her own shock and horror. Granted, it’s too late by then since Desdemona is already dead, but you get the point. Hoskins is very much up to the task, gleefully watching the normally eloquent Othello fall into an epileptic stupor as random words come out of his mouth, and he even may look happy in the play’s final moments. It’s hard to say. His face is partially obscured by shadows, but even so, as various survivors say how much they will punish and torture him for what he’s done, he doesn’t seem all that upset about it.
As for the other two, Wilton is a fine Desdemona. She doesn’t stand out as much as she will these days, but she does the innocent victim here very well, a kind-hearted woman who doesn’t have a terrible thing to say about anyone, and someone who will do as a good wife of that era will and wait for her husband to come home and murder her. But as for Hopkins…I was expecting better. He, at times, shakes his head in a fury like some kind of dog, and when he isn’t, he’s more quiet and contemplative than angry. I wasn’t all that impressed. That actually surprises me a little since I generally like Hopkins in anything.
Which is too bad. There’s a lot going on in Othello. Of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies–this one, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear–it’s the most personal. The other three have the fates of entire countries hanging in the balance. Here, it’s just one couple. The entirety of Venice is not at stake. It’s just one man’s broken heart over nothing, one false friend telling lies if for no other reason than he can, and one woman paying the price for such unknown animosity. It’s a tragedy that, chances are, most people can relate to far better than who the rightful king of Denmark, Scotland, or Britain should be.
Grade: Maybe it’s because I wanted to like this one more and it didn’t fit my expectations, but I’m giving it a B instead of something higher that I had thought I would give it.
Next: Honestly, this next one is a play whose general plot I don’t remember all that well, aside from the fact it’s set during the Trojan War. That would be Troilus and Cressida.
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