OnStage: Dueling Othellos

What's hot in theater? In a word, "Othello." Shakespeare's tragedy has been staged twice in New York this year -- once to raves (Arin Arbus' production in February) and then to boos (Peter Sellars' in September). In the Twin Cities, two productions open tonight. Ten Thousand Things has been on tour to prisons and shelters but will now perform for public audiences at Open Book and the Opera Center in Minneapolis.

Meanwhile, Park Square Theatre has assembled a dream team for its production, directed by Richard Cook. James A. Williams, Star Tribune's artist of the year in 2008, heads the cast. Steve Hendrickson and Stacia Rice, both Ivey winners, join him as Iago and Desdemona. Virginia Burke, fresh off her success in "Becky's New Car" at Park Square, is Emilia. Mo Perry, John Catron, Edwin Strout, Bruce Bohne, Jim Cada and Craig Johnson are some of the others -- 21 in all.

"I look at it and go, wow, the risk that Park Square is taking in this financial climate to hire this many actors to tell this story is really courageous," said Williams, who will play Othello for the first time in his distinguished career.

"I did not have a desire to do this particular piece," Williams said in an interview. "It didn't make sense to me how someone who is as capable and talented and intelligent as Othello would fall for what Iago says."

What turned Williams' head around was a project he did with playwright Carlyle Brown in 2002, "The Masks of Othello." Plunging deeply into the social context and Elizabethan milieu, Williams and Brown -- who is dramaturg on Park Square's production -- began to open up the world of Othello.

Often reduced to a simple theme of "a black guy in a white world," Brown said, "Othello" risks unraveling when theater companies modernize the play. Seeking to imbue the work with relevance, these efforts have the opposite effect, he argues.

"The play is not about race, but race is the context," he said. "I've always felt that race is so powerful for us that we appropriate the play."

Othello was a mercenary in a Venetian culture that cast a skeptical eye at outsiders. A great warrior, he nonetheless did not enjoy status on a par with citizens of the republic. Eloping with Desdemona was not simply a love affair but a scandal. Marriages were intended for political advantage, yet Othello offered nothing in leverage for Desdemona's family.

"Shakespeare wrote to his audience," Brown said. "To an Elizabethan, they would have understood that, it speaks context."

Still, for Williams there was the problem of Othello appearing to be no more than a pawn in Iago's vengeful scheme. He now feels that Othello and Desdemona, by being ostracized, were drawn together in a relationship that went beyond mere infatuation. Watching Desdemona stand up to the Senate and her own father made her that much more attractive to Othello, Williams said. In his devotion to her, he loses focus when Iago comes around slinging his crafty connivance. Soon enough, evil takes over.

"People can be tipped and we say, 'I never would have thought that of her, or him,'" Williams said. "And what happens if there is someone around who is so devoid of human compassion [Iago], they get their enjoyment from causing all this chaos?"

Modern times

Directors Michelle Hensley and Sonja Parks take a slightly different approach in Ten Thousand Things' production. The duke, the representative of Venetian power who sends Othello to Cyprus to fight the Turks, is played by a black woman (Christiana Clark) and Desdemona's father, Branbantio, is here portrayed as Desdemona's mother. That somewhat complicates Shakespeare's subtext.

"It's more like our world," said Hensley in an interview before the play opened.

Parks said she believes the different layers make it more difficult to distance oneself from the play.

Still, the commonalities between both productions are obvious.

"This is about taboo emotions," Parks said. "Lust, jealousy, envy and greed."

Sadly, those qualities are timeless.

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299