Bard on the Beach's third production of the season was a somewhat modernized version of Othello that was well enough performed and staged, but still failed to find the greatness of the source material.
The stage, which is shared by the company's production of Pericles, was decorated like the war-torn ruins of a Greco-style building. This cleverly befits both plays, as Othello has been relocated from its usual Italian locale to the American Civil War.
The new setting had a truly great potential to reshape how each character's nature and motivation might be interpreted. Iago might suddenly become a bigoted southerner and Othello a man fighting not only for his side of the war, but also his own freedom or equality to his fellows.
It certainly does speak well for Shakespeare that the play can be so seamlessly modernized and remain relevant, though it probably does not speak well of society that most of the racial themes are entirely relatable to times and places that came hundreds of years after.
The problem is that the only real attempts to draw meaning from the setting lay in a few word changes (such as wine to moonshine) and a change in uniforms. Otherwise this was just Othello with a new coat of paint and little else. In fact, by the end of the first act, it was largely forgotten that the setting was different at all. Whereas The Merry Wives of Windsor wholly embraced its new setting and drew every possible interpretation or joke out of it, Othello remained immensely conservative.
This would have been quite forgivable if the performances had not also been largely unremarkable and quite safe. Othello (Luc Roderique) was played with force, a commanding voice and a physical presence, but that overlooks a very affectionate, fraternal aspect of his personality which other actors have emphasized. When this is done, his tragic downfall becomes all the more affecting because the audience knows how much he loves Iago, right until the end. It is a quintessential part of the character which played no part here, and made it hard to feel much sympathy.
Iago's portrayal by Kayvon Kelly was similarly problematic in that he was always conniving and tricking, with a perpetual dastardly manner whenever he was on stage. This was not all bad, and there were certainly moments where he was commanding the entire stage quite well. However, Iago's strength as a character is that he is a man who operates on two levels; he is in appearance a friend to all, "honest Iago," and one who is so strongly loved by Othello, but he is also revealed in his soliloquies and actions to be a sociopathic liar and manipulator, driven by an immensely diabolical hatred. He must be convincing on both levels, and is best when he almost fools the audience into liking him. Here he was so plainly ill-intentioned that a lot of his complexity was lost and with it his great villainy.
The performance was a good one, that leveraged enough emotion and theatricality to be engaging. That being said, Othello fell short of greatness by failing to interrogate the depth and complexity in both the source material and new setting which it might have made it truly unique. It also did not help matters that the audience could hear The Merry Wives of Windsor playing its raucous musical numbers in the other tent.
Visit here for tickets. Othello will be running until September 17.