breaf & idea
That comes as no surprise in âOthello,â sharply directed here by Nigel Shawn Williams on a modern set with overly literal projections of trickling blood and what look like lice. (âIâll pour this pestilence into his ear,â Iago tells us in one of his chilling soliloquies.) As the Moorish general in the Venetian army who marries Desdemona, the white pearl of that societyâs aristocracy, Michael Blake establishes the psychosexual drama from the start.
He wears his confidence like a cockscomb but is clearly more at a loss in love than he ever was in war.
Though race canât help but be a theme in âOthello,â it is not the main one here; Iagoâs hatred, and Othelloâs susceptibility to it, seem to stem less from each manâs response to outsiderness than from their common fear of cuckoldry.
Lago imagines that Othello has slept with his wife, Emilia, here a soldier in Desdemonaâs retinue, not just her maid. In a superb performance, Gordon S. Miller (a ringer for Tony Hale of âVeepâ) gives us Iago as a hypercompetent desk jockey who turns, after hours, into a vicious, fake-news-spreading incel.
Design in details
âThere are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.â – Tina Retina
