Sound and fury

Trinity puts the pedal to Othello

by Carolyn Clay

OTHELLO. By William Shakespeare. Directed by Amanda Dehnert. Set design by David Jenkins. Costumes by William Lane. Lighting by Pat Collins. Movement by Kelli Wicke Davis. Fight choreography by Craig Handel. With Algernon D'Ammassa, Eric Tucker, William Damkoehler, John Douglas Thompson, Stephan Wolfert, Fred Sullivan Jr., Cynthia Strickland, Max Vogler, Jennifer Mudge Tucker, Dan Welch, Janice Duclos, and Phyllis Kay. At Trinity Repertory Company, through October 10.

"Less is more" has never been a hallmark of Trinity Rep. Less might become the Moor, however, in the company's vigorous Othello, which boasts a heartbreaking turn by John Douglas Thompson in the title role but is marred by a desire to keep Shakespeare's tragedy loud and lively at any cost. Inventive young director Amanda Dehnert is full of ideas, some fascinating, some wrongheaded; and this military-outpost staging -- harshly lit and punctuated by marching orders and the pounding of sticks -- is chock with them. But the sheer clang and bang of the production, which is also awash in water, get in the play's way.

Dehnert, who at 26 was recently appointed associate artistic director of the venerable Trinity troupe, took a similarly kinetic approach to last season's stripped-down staging of Shaw's Saint Joan. That production also featured a rough, strong setting -- there a runway, here an arena -- by veteran New York set designer David Jenkins and a fast, highly physical assault on a classic. Although some of Dehnert's Saint Joan was over the top, it heralded the arrival at Trinity of an impressive talent. The same gifts, and the same stridency, are on view here -- along with the same beauteous Jennifer Mudge Tucker, who follows her exuberant Joan with a jarringly if innocently sexy Desdemona. Fellow Trinity Rep Conservatory grad Eric Tucker is a robust but insufficiently chilling or subtle Iago.

Othello, as is noted in the program, is perhaps the most straightforward of Shakespeare's tragedies. There is no subplot, just the juggernaut from wedding sheets to deathbed as Iago seeps, then pours, his poison into the ear of the noble, fierce, manipulable Moor. Angry at having been passed over for the position of Othello's lieutenant and suspicious (he says) that the Moor has slept with his wife, Iago sets out to "serve my turn upon him." The malevolent ensign devises a master plan, more or less as he goes along, to convince Othello that new wife Desdemona is a strumpet passing out hankies and sexual favors like candy. Just why he does so is never sufficiently explained, leading many to regard the play as a study of groundless human malignancy as well as the cautionary tale "Of one that loved not wisely but too well."

Although Othello is not so hot a potato as The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare does incorporate some racial stereotyping into the character of the credulous and volatile Moor (a dark-skinned North African, whose color figures prominently in the play's imagery). Too often, in modern productions, the solution is to play up Othello's dignity but to stunt his violent passion; it was this approach that allowed Christopher Plummer, the riveting Iago of the 1982 Broadway staging, to wipe the stage with no less than the sonorous but too stolid James Earl Jones. In Trinity's mostly young cast, Tucker is an Iago more peevish than evil to the empty core. But Thompson goes all the way with Othello on his rash, painful, paroxysmal journey. More a taut and wiry than a mature and commanding physical presence, the actor, his arms flung up or out, captures the Moor's much-vaunted openness. Then, his exultant, confident persona pierced, he infuses Othello's mounting, fixated fury with real anguish. And during the fragmented "Lie with her! Lie on her!" speech, he directs his body, frighteningly, toward the convulsion that ends the rant.

As for the collaboration between Dehnert and Mudge Tucker on Desdemona, well, Shakespeare's submissive "angel" isn't turned into the enterprising whore of Paula Vogel's Desdemona, a play about a handkerchief. But she does run around wrapped in a sheet -- when she isn't navigating Cypress like some stunning doxy in a tight top, long skirt, and combat boots, a sexy little necklace encircling her naked midriff. Moreover, there is so much urgent embracing in the production that it's a wonder Othello requires a formal introduction to the "green-eyed monster."

Dehnert is probably aiming with this lustier Desdemona, as with the pumped-up and ever-present soldiers, to suggest the relative freedom and tension of the military-base setting. But turning the passionately faithful Desdemona into even an unintentional vixen goes against the text. Mudge Tucker is stronger after intermission, when her girlish coquetry gives way to an almost defiant bewilderment and quiet, fervent embrace of her honor. The murder victim's wild, fist-flailing fight for her life, though, runs counter to the character.

The energetic production, in Trinity's flexible upstairs theater, is performed in full arena on a square platform atop a pool of knee-deep water. In the opening scenes, in Venice, the lapping liquid suggests the canals, and Cypress, to which the play repairs, is an island (though here it seems more like Alcatraz). Water also makes a purgative appearance at the play's conclusion. Frankly, I'm not sure what the water lends, and the production, with its impressive stick-fight choreography by Craig Handel, is sufficiently proximate and physical without the actors' throwing off spray as they grapple.

This is the sort of Shakespeare production that defies anyone to find the Bard boring -- the school-age Project Discovery audiences will discover nothing lacking but Bruce Willis. The play's sexually charged language and trajectory are clear, and the action rivals that of a commando raid. Even Othello's anguish is there, in Thompson's performance, if not the play's poetry. And the supporting performances are, for the most part, boot-camp honed and blunt. My reservation: all the percussion and fisticuffs threaten to pound the grandeur out of Othello.