Othello (Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Production)
by Wilson Milam
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Actor: Eamonn Walker, Tim McInnerny, Zoe TapperDirector: Wilson Milam
Brand: Kultur
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 195 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-03-25
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: KULTUR VIDEO
DVD Reviews of Othello (Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Production)
DVD Review: The Tragedy of Othello Undermined By Jigs and Clowns, Or What Did Shakespeare Know?
Summary: 2 Stars
This production may rightly be praised for its eye-opening uses of the thrust stage of the "restored" Shakespearean Globe Theater. Not only are we spared unnecessarily elaborate sets and flamboyant costumes, but the action surprisingly is not set, say, on the far side of the moon, in the fashion nowadays of "innovative" stage directors who themselves often sorely need a director. The Globe Theater set-up happily allows the action and the language of a play to emerge clearly and naturally as its principal stars. Further, almost all members of the assembled cast speak their lines with exemplary intelligibility (Kudos to Patsy Rodenburg, the diction coach). A partial exception, however, is the Desdemona, the beautiful but finally cloying Zoe Tapper, whose vocal prowess ranges from the high-pitched strident to the high-pitched sorely beset, losing communication of any interiority of character as a consequence. Her voice in future stage roles would probably benefit, as did Vivien Leigh's under the tutelage of Laurence Olivier, by being lowered at least half, if not a whole octave.
The various scenes of this tragedy, as indicated, flow with a wonderful momentum, reproducing as they do the probable minimalism of the original seventeenth-century production. Also, the use of multiracial casting works to dispel the notion that the play is more about racial prejudice than about an unusual but wholly commendable case of intermarriage meant to circumvent any tribalist notions of human nature the audience may hold. But casting both Emilia and Bianca as black women whose race is never commented on raises as many problems as it solves. For one thing, it renders Brabantio's surprising disgust at his daughter's marriage to the Moor wholly unntelligible and throws much else in the play out of whack, since mixed marriages or relationships seem the order of the day, not the singular triumph of Desdemona, who "saw Othello's visage in his mind."
Despite whatever strengths mentioned, remaining flaws in this production quickly and disastrously overwhelm its merits. In my view, the philistine director Wilson Milam is the principal problem. His real wish, as his commentary indicates, is to present "Othello, the Comedy," since it hasn't been done before. The heart of his production, accordingly, is the Iago-Roderigo relationship, which benighted Shakespeare had thought, at best, a sidebar to the pity and terror of the tragedy of the uxorious Moor. Comedy is clearly director Milam's interest. Nothing else meaningful is underlined in the swift passage of scenes. The play's central themes of diverse responses to loss and the nature of patience in affliction hardly emerge to lend meaning and beauty to the action, thus rendering the great tragedy just an interesting, if pointless, piece of viciousness. What the director emphasizes instead is tomfoolery. The clowns speak more than has been written down for them (pace Hamlet), and impertinent jigs needed to keep a Polonius awake are inserted, too (again, pace Hamlet). The actor playing Iago is unfortunately allowed to wrench the play even further out of proportion. The laughter which rightly greets his manipulation of the hapless Roderigo inappropriately raises its head in scenes where we're clearly meant to sympathize wholly with the noble and anguished Othello and Desdemona, not laugh along with Iago. A.C.Bradley famously observed that "the genius of Shakespeare in creating Iago is that we, the audience, never lose sympathy with Othello and Desdemona." But what did Shakespeare know? Director Milam crudely upsets this brilliant balance.
In truth, the only scene which suggests any tragic pain and horror is the closing one, and by then it's too late for it to make much of an effect on the also shockingly barbaric, inappropriately giggling Globe audience. Moreover, and for the record, even this final scene, which mostly works, isn't free of a glaring directorial miscalculation. When Desdemona discovers that Othello really intends to kill her, she leaps off her bed, banging on the locked bedroom door and screaming for her own rescue in the manner of a B-movie gun moll about to be bumped off. Her behavior here is hardly of a piece with her beautiful final response moments later to the question of who committed such violence upon her person, "Nobody. I myself." In conclusion, the actors and the tragedy itself deserved a director (and perhaps an audience, too) more willing to confront the text's shocking power and pain straight on.
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Description of Othello (Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Production)
Performed for the first time at Shakespeare s Globe Theatre, with its racing concentrated plot and intense dramatic detail, Othello is one of Shakespeare's most exciting, atmospheric and heartbreaking plays. This is a tale of uncontrollable jealousy, deception and murder driven by one of theatre's greatest villains."Full of pace and energy... Eamonn Walker brings to Othello dignity, grace and a fine sense of the contradiction that leads Othello to lament the pity of it even as he prepares to murder Desdemona" THE GUARDIAN
"Walker cuts a charismatic and brooding figure. He charts the hero's descent into murderous jealousy with a vivid physicality... Zoë Tapper (Desdemona) is enchanting". THE INDEPENDENT
The seriously disturbed side of Tim McInnerny's lago is riveting, with his pushiness morphing, in soliloquies, into a manic fury." THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
"The play suits the Globe better than any I've seen." TIME OUT
"Desdemona is perfection, the best I have ever seen. Tim McInnerny has been brilliantly cast as lago." OBSERVER
CAST
Bianca: Zawe Ashton
Cassio: Nick Barber
Aemelia: Lorraine Burroughs
Rodorgio: Sam Crane
Montano: Nigel Hastings
Clown: Paul Lloyd
Lago: Tim McInnerny
Duke of Venice: Jonathan Newth
Gratiano: Michael Taibi
Desdemona: Zoë Tapper
Lodovico: Dickon Tyrell
Senator / Soldier: Che Walker
Othello: Eamonn Walker
Director: Wilson Milam
Designer: Dick Bird
Composer: Stephen Warbeck
This production of OTHELLO was first performed at Shakespeare"s Globe Theatre, London on 4th May 2007. Recorded live.
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