In the Heat Of the Night: Othello's fiery set matches the passions of its jealous couple in Stratford's scorching production

Othello
Stratford Festival
The National Post

The new Stratford Othello is red hot. That goes for the way it looks, sounds, feels and takes possession. Chris Abraham's electrifying production, superlatively designed by Julie Fox, unfolds on a scarlet-drenched revolving rectangle, moved by humans rather than hydraulics, and itself backed by red panels. Billowing white curtains provide occasional contrast, functioning mostly to denote Desdemona's bedchamber, of which we're given a teasing glimpse a couple of scenes before the play and its hero move in for the sacrificial kill. This is presented right down on the lip of the stage and is as detailed and as shocking as I have ever known it.

The set is capable of thrilling instant transformations; from the tumult of the Venetian streets to the full order of the senate, and from there to the storm that greets Othello's arrival at Cyprus. It goes up and down as well as round and round, and it tilts so as continually to bring the action and the characters closer to us, thus conquering the notoriously flat and distant Avon Theatre stage. In fact, the production complements Abraham's staging last year of The Matchmaker, an ostensibly proscenium-bound play that he made work joyously on the Festival Theatre platform.

Dion Johnstone, whom I'd feared might be too lightweight for the title role, in fact navigates his way through and around it very skilfully. Using an accent (West African?) that I've never heard from him before, he emphasizes the Moor's strangeness in the society that employs him, and the extent to which he not only accepts but enjoys it; making his case to the senate, he lingers on the word "anthropophagi" as if it summed up all the exotic experiences he has had and they never will: the ones for which Desdemona, living them vicariously, fell in love with him. That love, on both sides, is palpable to the end, however distorted; and Othello's final dying "upon a kiss" is logical. He holds on to his trust for her for the longest and firmest time the play allows; in the temptation scene it's touch and go whether he'll succumb to Iago's poison or throttle the poisoner. Once it takes, he's a man possessed, and also a man made psychologically ugly, a transformation that Johnstone plays to the hilt. There are passages of verbal majesty and of volcanic passion that he can't encompass; but substantial proportions of the part and the play can come through without benefit of molten lava. His surrender to Iago is superbly acted and presented, again at the edge of the stage, the two kneeling men ("Now art thou my lieutenant," "I am your own for ever") effectively becoming one.

It's a truism that Iago is himself a victim of the jealousy with which he infects, and destroys, Othello. Graham Abbey's Iago doesn't merely suffer from jealousy; he's tormented by it. His "I am not what I am," delivered with the vocal tremor that in this actor denotes conviction rather than hesitation, is the utterance of a soul in hell, determined to drag everyone down there with him. He can act cheerful but he's fundamentally sombre. This is quite compatible with his opportunism and his relish for power - the click in his mind when Desdemona's father suggests that she will betray her husband as she did him is barely perceptible and yet unmistakable - but he doesn't notably enjoy his villainy; to adapt his own words, it is what he is. Among the myriad of motives he adduces for himself, one of the least remarked is a love for Desdemona; he then scornfully dismisses it, but in Abbey's performance it's plain that he does at least fancy her. Of all the masks he puts on, the most damnably convincing is that of her comforter, perhaps because at some level he wishes it were true. What this performance suggests - to me, anyway - is that Iago is consumed by the knowledge that he, alone in the play, is incapable of love. This includes his wife, Emilia, with whom he can put on an amorous act when necessary; she certainly loves him, obviously fears him, and is, in Deborah Hay's performance, visibly if quietly upset by his jokes about women. Their relationship is unusually believable, and her disillusion correspondingly intense. Iago always runs the first four-fifths of this play; Emilia, the one who undoes him, then takes over, and Hay's suspicion turned to anger is tremendous.

Bethany Jillard captures Desdemona's spirit, her innocence and, above all, her insistence; the quality that first enchants Othello and then, as she persists in pleading for Cassio, enrages him. She can't believe, until the very last moment, that he means to kill her; when she does realize it, she's terrifyingly terrified, while the murder itself - strangling followed by smothering - takes as long to accomplish as it realistically should. It drains Othello, even before he learns the truth.

Mike Shara is an exceptional Roderigo, passionate - even dangerously so - but infinitely suggestible, modelling his own moods on Iago's, taking every one of his suggestions and running with it. Brad Hodder brings unusual depth to Cassio's despair at the loss of his reputation; Peter Hutt overdoes Brabantio's anger in the opening scene (everybody's shouting here; it would be nice to have some variation) but is moving when he bitterly acknowledges his daughter to be lost.

The costumes are traditional Renaissance; Thomas Ryder Payne's brooding soundscore is contrastingly modern, and very effective. Also it never drowns out the actors. (Well, hardly ever.) This, as far as I know, is Abraham's first Shakespeare production - certainly his first major one, and of a play with an unlucky record at Stratford - and it's an extraordinary debut.