Since this Romeo was originally conceived by director János Szász (who withdrew in hope of directing a movie), in collaboration with a design team that includes Riccardo Hernandez (who had supplied sets for Szász’s strong ART stagings of Marat/Sade, Uncle Vanya, and Desire Under the Elms), it’s remarkable how well Roll’s approach conforms to the harsh, prearranged milieu, with its hints of Italian thuggery, its minimal furnishings, and DM Wood’s somber lighting design, in which vertical and horizontal shafts of light pinpoint action also illuminated at various times by poker lights, lanterns, candelabras, and what look like fireflies. Also contributing to the aggressive tenor of the production are Rod Kinter’s nasty, grunting knife fights and Doug Elkins’s striding, angular line dances.
But the actors, like the poetry, are shortchanged. Only Karen MacDonald manages a nuanced characterization, downplaying the caricatured bawdiness of the Nurse to create a woman both prating and sent reeling like a ragdoll by woe upon woe. Solis’s Romeo is allowed to digress from the general ire and be occasionally morose, but Solis replaced another actor three weeks before opening and hasn’t had the opportunity to dig as deep into the part as previous performances suggest he’s capable. Ayende captures Mercutio’s flamboyance when he addresses “Signor Ro-may-o,” but his performance is mostly declamatory. Thomas Derrah’s Friar Lawrence is commanding but almost fascistic. One presumes Will LeBow’s Capulet is hot under the collar because Elizabeth Hess’s boozy floozy of a Lady C is sleeping with Marc Aden Gray’s taut Tybalt, whose blood she wears like lipstick after his murder. This is a stylish production that a Verona-wide anger-management course might set right.
Less auteur- than actor-driven and far more powerful is Boston Theatre Works’ Othello (at the BCA Plaza Theatre through March 11). Director Jason Slavick gets out of the way of a quartet of powerhouse performers whose ability is such that one hardly minds the amateurs in the cast. The spare, intense staging boils down (or up) to a showdown between Jonathan Epstein’s alternately bullying and brooding villain of an Iago and Tony Molina’s thunderous yet childlike Othello. Unlike many modern African-American actors, Molina does not shy from the arguably racist savagery Shakespeare wrote into the part but ameliorates it with a sensual yearning for Desdemona that the old warrior can barely resist. These two are abetted by the defenselessly sincere Desdemona of Susanna Apgar and the eruptible Emilia of Elizabeth Aspenlieder. All four hail from Lenox-based Shakespeare & Company, which knows its way around the Bard, and their combined forces are enough to beat back the irritating eye pops and old-age mannerisms of some of the supporting players.
Not that the acting style favored by the principals is subtle; these folks wrap their capable arms and well-trained larynxes around the primal feelings in Othello and make the tragedy desperately real rather than declamatory. And neither does the staging shy from the black-comic irony in Iago’s increasingly flamboyant effort to push his gullible military master into the open arms of “the green-ey’d monster which doth mock/The meat it feeds on.” Indeed, there is no little mockery in the manipulations of Epstein’s Iago, and Molina’s Othello takes the bait with an open mouth.
