othello
the stratford festival
the national post

The Stratford season continues its investigation into racism in Renaissance Venice with a new production of Othello, the festival's first in 13 years. It is, of course, casting problems that have kept the play, theoretically one of the most popular of Shakespeare's, off the boards for so long. It no longer seems permissible to cast a white actor in the title role, not many black actors have amassed the classical experience to bring it off, and there are few actors of any colour with the tempestuous power, both vocal and temperamental, to play it at all. And even Iago, which seems a foolproof role, in fact isn't. It's easy to make a great villain entertaining. It's hard to make him believable.

David Latham's production boasts a good Othello, a superb Iago, and a mounting tension that gets started around the middle of the play and goes through the roof at the end. It's also staged straightforwardly and traditionally costumed. Philip Akin, the first Stratford Moor to be both black and Canadian, is a visibly battle- scarred warrior with an unassuming authority and considerable charm.

Where Akin and the play swing into life is in the central temptation scene, which is beautifully built by all concerned. Othello first seems secure enough in his wife's love to brush aside Iago's insinuations. But the worm has already entered his soul, and in what follows, we practically see it taking possession. By the end of the scene, literally and figuratively on his knees, he is Iago's creature, his partner in jealousy. Akin charts the rest of the decline with terrifying accuracy. He hits a speed bump in the approach to the murder of Desdemona: Lacking Othello's extravagance of soul, he makes "it is the cause" sound more spiteful than sacramental. But he recovers to find an impressive emotional logic in the despairing acceptance of guilt that culminates in suicide.

Jonathan Goad's Iago is a self-prized realist envenomed at the thought of the self-prized hero. Iago hates everyone and has affection for no one. He is, apart from Richard III, Shakespeare's only sociopath; and even Richard has a late fit of conscience. Goad, young as Iago should be (he admits to 28), captures all the chilled inhumanity and the self-deprecating humour that conceals it. The most fluent verse-speaker in the company, he still conveys the prosaic doggedness of Iago's mind. Articulate though he is in both modes, he is still the first Iago to make me believe in his final vow of silence. He has sealed off every other avenue of human contact; now speech goes as well. We are left with his final glance at the corpses on the bed and the knowledge that, for him, they make everything worthwhile.

Lucy Peacock's Emilia begins with quiescent resignation; you shudder at her marriage to Iago, but you understand it. She proceeds, like all good Emilias, to take over the play; first as Desdemona's worldly confidante, then as her avenger. The racing excitement of the last scene is largely down to her as she uncovers the plot; so is its emotional power. She's the audience's representative on stage; as with Peter Donaldson's Kent at the end of King Lear and Peter Krantz's de Stogumber in the Niagara Saint Joan, we are moved in large part because of this. She's a more heartening figure, because she is a more active one, than either of them.

Othello heats us. Iago chills us. But the lumps in our throats are Emilias's fault.