Stacia Rice, center, as Desdemona, is confronted by James A. Williams as Othello in the Park Square production. / Photo by Amy Anderson.

By Graydon Royce

I was curious, as many others were, to compare Park Square's production "Othello" with Ten Thousand Things' version.

While I liked the clean simplicity of Ten Thousand Things, Park Square (despite a performance Saturday night that took awhile to get any traction) has a much better handle on the central character.

James A. Williams has a some of that "Shakespearean actor" thing going on and is not as natural as his Troy Maxson ("Fences"), but J.W. has a little thing called presence. Just by being there, breathing and walking, means something. And his deep understanding of the play revealed how the entire thing hinges on a single line: "when I love thee not, chaos is come again." Yes! His relationship with Desdemona was the only thing holding this outsider together. She was his reason for living and when he begins to entertain thoughts that she might be unfaithful, his sense of order begins to crack. It is nothing less than a revelatory moment.

Steve Hendrickson at Park Square and Luverne Seifert at Ten Thousand Things have different takes on Iago — both enjoyable and defensible. Desdemona is still something of a stick figure but Stacia Rice has a stature that gives the relationship between her and Othello a nobility. Tracey Maloney and Ansa Akyea have the bloom of young lovers at Ten Thousand Things. The biggest difference in performance is in Emilia, Iago's wife. Virginia Burke is brilliant at Park Square. She understands every emotion and motivation.

Though Park Square's production can look clunky and old fashioned, it expresses Othello's isolation and his own grasp of responsibility better than Ten Thousand Things' staging — which feels like Iago's show.

But that's just my opinion. Maybe you felt differently?

Ticket and production information:

www.parksquaretheatre.org

www.tenthousandthings.org