Yes, a thousand times yes, William Shakepeare’s “Othello” is about race and otherness. It is also an utterly painful lesson in the battered, betrayed alliances of war and of love.
Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s production — which opened last week and runs through Aug. 8 — is the stuff of alliances. No, not those that lead to tragedy but those that offer a working through of creative, cultural possibility.
Consider it elegant poetry that, after nearly two decades, the tragedy about a man (black) killing his wife (white), returns to Boulder’s Mary Rippon outdoor stage with director Lisa Wolpe and actor Peter Macon, her long-time friend, tag-teaming one of Shakespeare’s more uncomfortable plays.
To put it mildly.
“In the way that some Jews bitterly and mistakenly resent Shylock, I was dubious about Othello (what did he see in Desdemona?) and bitter about Caliban,” James Baldwin wrote in an essay entitled “Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare.” “His great vast gallery of people, whose reality was as contradictory as it was unanswerable, unspeakably oppressed me.”
Neither Wolpe or Macon is a stranger to the vexations (and wonders) of “Othello.”
Macon first portrayed the brilliant military strategist — and romantically exposed newlywed — in an Oregon Shakespeare Festival production in 2008. Last year, he returned to his Minneapolis hometown as lead in the Guthrie Theater production, directed by another friend Marion McClinton, who became August Wilson’s director after Lloyd Richards.
“I’ve known him since I was 16. We had a relationship and we started talking about the play six to eight months out before we started rehearsal,” said Macon. “We had a lot of conversations about self-hatred, and Desdemona and love of the white woman, because he’s a black man.”
When plunging into this play of race, competition and betrayal, trust between director and actor is vital.
“He has that classical voice that resonates in every fiber of your being,” said Wolpe of her lead. “He’s a real thinker. He’s a drummer, a lover. He’s a Renaissance man. He knocked my socks off yesterday.” She and her cast were three days into the breakneck rehearsal schedule for the show, which opened Saturday evening.
Co-founder of the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company, an actor as well as director, Wolpe was hailed for her portrayal of Iago. She “saves her most interesting interpretation for the diabolic ensign, a role she performs so naturally that you’re hardly aware of any cross-dressing trickery,” a Los Angeles Times review stated.
Hardly cowed by Shakespeare’s more controversial works, the gender-bending artist has also inhabited Shylock, the infamous role of Jewish money-lender in “Merchant of Venice.”
As for “Othello” and its anxieties about race, gender and otherness? Well, it has been subjected to a great deal of artistic tussling.
In 2011, Toni Morrison’s “Desdemona” was staged outside of Paris. Directed by Peter Sellars, it was the Nobel Prize winner’s response to Sellars’ rail against Shakespeare’s play.
This year, the National Theatre updated the work, casting Emilia and Desdemona as female soldiers. And the Royal Shakespeare Company made history with its casting of Lucian Msamati (pirate lord Salladhor Saan in “Game of Thrones”) as Iago. Racism did not exit stage left because director Iqbal Khan’s casting of a black man in the role. It just got more twisted.
Closer to home, local female theater company, the Betsy Stage revisited the tragedy as a deceptively light-hearted musical, wrote Denver Post reviewer Claire Martin.
Given these current trends and Wolpe’s theater company’s all-female productions, one might well imagine we audience members are in for all kinds of play-bending gestures. Think again. While the duke has been made duchess, this “Othello,” says the director, cast its anchor in the period of the original.
“Because so many directors do concept Shakespeare now, I thought people would enjoy a lavish production with thigh-high leather boots and rapiers,” said Wolpe. “And the story of invading poorer people’s countries and taking their stuff continues.”
She and Macon also see opportunity in the decidedly monotone makeup of the festival’s audience. “To be frank with you, having visited this festival last year, I didn’t see any black people in the audience and they haven’t done this play since 1996,” the director said. “So, I said to Peter, I don’t think we have to work to other-ize you in Colorado.”
Slovakian actress Laura Baranik plays Desdemona. Local actor-director and Colorado Shakes veteran Geoffrey Kent portrays Iago, one of the greatest frenemies in English literature, the guy who not only deftly toys with Othello’s uncertainty but also exploits the bigotry of the Venetians who gladly employ the Moor to wage their battles. But marry their daughters, well.
“Sometimes, I hate this f—ing play,” Macon admitted. “But I see it as an opportunity, too, to explore and present this exploration in front of an audience,” he added.
“It takes a very unique set of skills to do this and do it well and keep pushing us as far away from Laurence Olivier’s Othello as I possibly can, which was offensive and embarrassing,” he said.
“I’m attracted to the complicated. Complicated gets my mind racing. I get to get in there and get dirty and messy and figure stuff out. I think the great thing about this play is it leaves you with questions.”
And few can argue that we live in a moment that demands answers but also much smarter questions.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
“OTHELLO” Written by William Shakespeare. Directed by Lisa Wolpe. Featuring Peter Macon, Laura Baranik, Geoffrey Kent, Sam Gregory and Peter Simon Hilton. Through Aug. 8. 3 hours. At the Mary Rippon Outdoor Theatre on the University of Colorado – Boulder campus. Tickets $10-$64 via coloradoshakes.org or 303-492-8008
CORRECTION: Due to erroneous information provided by the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, “Othello” actress Laura Baranik’s nationality was previously misidentified in this story. The Canadian actress was born in former Czechoslovakia and is currently based in New York.
