By Steve Craton
It’s said that film is a director’s medium, while plays belong to the actors. This is especially true in the case of Othello as performed by the Actors from the London Stage company on their Fall 2013 tour, which stops at UNC Charlotte’s Belk Theater for shows Oct. 17-20. Five British Shakespearean actors – Jude Akuwudike, Richard Neale, Jan Shepherd, Jack Whitam, and Alinka Wright – portray multiple roles on a minimalist set while wearing only one costume with varying accessories (so as to denote differing characters). Shakespeare himself might have approved of such a production, since in the Prologue to Henry V he writes, “Think when we talk of horses, that you see them.”
Because of the production’s approach to Shakespeare, the audience is exhorted by the actors to perform an “imaginative engagement.” The company’s academic director Peter Holland states that there are “no massive sets to tower over the performers and no directorial concept to tower over the text of Shakespeare’s play.” However, even with the production’s only set piece consisting of a grey box with a uniform dimension of two feet and one prop – a fencing sword — not much effort is required to imagine what transpires because of the phenomenal acting by each of the players.
Besides imagining sets and props, some of the male characters are played expertly by the two females on stage. That’s ironic, since in Shakespeare’s time, female roles were always played by males. Both Wright and Shepard are wonderful. Wright’s Desdemona is particularly convincing and showcases a variety of emotions from marital bliss to inconsolable despair. However, Shepard’s ability to change from a male character to a female character with no more of a costume change than a shawl or a cap is even more phenomenal. Her Roderigo is not just an attempt to play a man but instead a transformation into a love-sick, foolish, and passionate man blind to Iago’s scheming and treachery. Similarly, Shepard’s Emilia (wife of Iago) is equally unaware of her husband’s plan of revenge and unwittingly aids him, none the wiser.
Akuwudike’s convincing portrayal of Othello is devoted and loving in the beginning but paranoid and murderous in the end, while Whitman seamlessly goes from playing the mature Brabantio to the young Cassio. The scene-stealer, however, is Neale and his portrayal of the diabolical Iago. Neale’s interaction with the audience brings a different and interesting dimension to what is a stellar performance by all the players.
Like most of Shakespeare’s best plays, Othello is a seminal work studied for its literary value as well as its contribution to the theater. The lines of the characters are as important — or more, according to some — than the plots and it’s argued that Shakespeare’s work should never have its language ‘updated’ to more contemporary usage. This production of Othello makes it clear that excellent acting will always trump elaborate sets, costumes, and gimmicks.