The cast of this chamber Othello numbers nine, with supporting players doubling in minor roles in the manner of S&C’s Bare Bard productions. (There has not, in the manner of those stagings, been significant paring of the script, however.) Epstein, coming and going among the revolvable blood-red panels of Zeynep Bakkal’s set and slamming them as he goes (at least once on the amusingly hapless Roderigo of Michael McKeogh), uses the scenery to punctuate his character’s calculated explosiveness, which combined with alternately heavy-handed and craftsmanlike manipulation keeps his marks off balance and makes him deadly. A lot of the action takes place atop an onyx-colored platform center stage that serves as both a pedestal for Desdemona and a square barely big enough to hold this larger-than-life Iago and Othello, who face off there, their imposing bodies but inches apart, at intermission. (There is an interesting undercurrent of homosexuality in Epstein’s Iago, who never stops poking, prodding, or pushing the men but stiffens visibly when touched by a woman.)
There are moments when I might have preferred this duel to the death to have been slyer, less overt. The perverse villainy of Epstein’s Iago is so studied that you don’t know whether to hold him in awe or his suckers in contempt. But in the end, between Apgar’s initially affectless Desdemona’s serene yet pained (and ultimately panicky) self-sacrifice and the anguish Molina brings to Othello’s destruction of the thing he so urgently loves, the BTW production, simple yet brutal, brought me to tears. The old pity and terror prescribed by Aristotle: they’re here.
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The drama of the holidays (and I don’t mean A Christmas Carol) may be behind us, but there’s plenty more drama — and comedy and musicals — ahead to light up long winter nights.
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Huntington Theatre Company artistic director Nicholas Martin recently announced that he would leave his post in 2008.
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Huntington Theatre Company artistic director Nicholas Martin recently announced that he would leave his post in 2008.
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You’ve heard of star-crossed lovers, but how about star-crossed productions?
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Critic Harold Bloom compares Cleopatra, more in her infinite vitality than in her “infinite variety,” to that Shakespearean life force Sir John Falstaff.
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In Rough Crossing , British playwright Tom Stoppard demonstrates that even in the manufacture of abject silliness he’s smarter than anyone else.
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Boston's weekly theater schedule
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Amanda Bynes has a pretty dedicated following of tweens, and that’s a good thing for her, since only her most fervent fans will want to sit through this painful retelling of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night .
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This world luxuriates in cool, expensive black-and-white.
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The roar of the greasepaint precedes that of the autumn wind this year.
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Topics:
Theater
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, William Shakespeare, Loeb Drama Center, Boston Theatre Works, Karen MacDonald, David Remedios, Mickey Solis, Jonathan Epstein, Tony Molina, Thomas Derrah, Riccardo Hernandez, Less
