Verdi's Otello

Our president, Frances Dharmalingam, shares her views on this remarkable work.

A few days ago I was at last able to use the Christmas present given to me by my family: a ticket to a performance of Verdi’s opera, Otello, by the WA Opera Company.

I admired the skilful production, particularly the handling of the very large chorus (augmented with singers from South Africa, New Zealand and other parts of Australia) and the choreography of Cassio’s drunken brawl;  revelled in the glorious playing of the WA Symphony Orchestra and the wonderful singing – Desdemona’s beautiful clarity, Otello’s impressive range and control of tone and volume, and the menacing force of Iago; and was impressed by the versatility of the set, which was designed to show economically  and with minimum fuss the many aspects of a great ship, from the operation room, to the decks, to the private apartment of the commander, with a clever suggestion of the endless long corridors and companionways.

It all made a powerful impression, with much to think over at leisure.

At home next day I had time to consider how the Shakespearean text had been used.

The entire action occurred on board an aircraft carrier, either at sea or in harbour on Cyprus, so there were no scenes in Venice. Otello’s courtship (originally described by him to the Venetian senators) was recounted by Otello and Desdemona in a love scene after his safe delivery from the dramatic opening storm, a love scene which occurs off-stage in the play.

Dispensing with the Venetian scenes omitted the parental opposition to the marriage, and the sense of Desdemona’s independent courage in defying father, Duke and senate. Also, the reasons for Iago’s hatred of Otello were somewhat curtailed, and we just had to accept it without extensive explanation.  However, we were given a quite terrifying glimpse into Iago’s nihilistic soul in the detailed self-analysis of a long aria which ended with an almost playful (and illustrative) game of Russian roulette.

For most of the opera I felt that Iago powerfully dominated the action (almost to the point of wondering whether it should have been called Iago rather than Otello). Iago was played by James Clayton. With his tall figure and strong baritone voice, and his excellent acting, it was hardly surprising that he seemed so easily to undermine Otello’s confidence. However, the great turning point (Act III sc. 3 in the play) for me lacked the impetus and dramatic tension of Shakespeare’s dialogue, the rapid exchanges perhaps slowed by the requirements of the music. My daughter turned to me in the interval after this scene with the irritated comment: 'How could Otello  have been so gullible?' It is perhaps unfortunate that I had seen the film of the wonderful National Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Othello just a few months ago, in which that scene showed Othello putting up real resistance, fighting every inch of the way before succumbing to Iago’s insinuations.

In the second half, Otello, played by Antonelli Palombi, took a more prominent part, his rage and confusion very effectively conveyed through his singing and acting. It must surely be the ultimate theatrical challenge to combine first-class singing and convincing acting, which modern opera production certainly demands, and this cast rose to the challenge. Cassio, played by Henry Choo, gave a splendid performance as the nice man who knows his own weakness but hasn’t the strength to resist Iago’s blandishments as he allows himself to sink into drunkenness and be completely humiliated.  He sustained his characterisation consistently through the subsequent  events. Fiona Campbell, as Emilia, had a rather less significant role than in the play, but established the fond relationship between Emilia and Desdemona.  The hostility between herself and Iago was also made clear.

Because the action was confined to the ship it was not possible to show the scene in the dark back streets on shore, when Roderigo attempts to murder Cassio, but is himself killed. We were less aware of Roderigo’s part in the action throughout than in the play, with little emphasis on his use to Iago as a source of income as well as a tool in the working out of his plots.

Desdemona’s death scene was genuinely moving, though much prolonged by the prayers (which are not performed in the play) and by the Willow song, which was of course so 'operatic' in contrast with the simplicity of an unaccompanied version. Cheryl Barker’s lovely voice and touching manner did justice to poor Desdemona’s end.

Otello played out the dreadful conclusion of his own weaknesses and insecurities, Palombi showing that he is an actor as well as a fine singer, and he capably commanded the centre of attention, as Iago was relegated to an insignificant corner.

I am not really sure why it was necessary to change the ending. In the opera, Emilia was allowed to live, and Iago committed suicide by shooting himself in the head (an echo of his earlier game) and so escaped the threat of torture and execution back in Venice.  Perhaps leaving him almost ignored in the corner enabled us to focus more fully on Otello’s tragic end – which I certainly did – as a wonderfully stirring production concluded.

I should not like my comparisons between the libretto and the play’s script to be seen as a form of criticism. It is obvious that changes must be made in telling the same story through two different mediums. While I very much enjoyed the opera, I couldn’t resist thinking of the play, of which I am fond, and the exercise allowed me the pleasure of  re-examining it.

James Clayton as Iago

West Australian Opera and Perth International Arts Festival present

Otello

His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth

4, 6, 8, 11 February 2014

Opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verd,

Libretto by Arrigo Boito

A co-production of Cape Town Opera, West Australian Opera,

New Zealand Opera, Opera Queensland,

State Opera of South Australia and Victorian Opera

Conductor Joseph Colaneri

Director Simon Phillips

Rehearsal Director Matthew Wild

Scenery Designer  Dale Ferguson

Costume Designer Michael Mitchell

Lighting Designer  Nick Schlieper

Lighting Associate Chris Twyman

Otello Antonello Palombi

Desdemona Cheryl Barker

Iago James Clayton

Emilia Fiona Campbell

Cassio Henry Choo

Roderigo Matthew Lester

Lodovico Andrew Collis

Montano Andrew Foote

Herald  David Dockery

WEST AUSTRALIAN OPERA CHORUS

AND

CAPE TOWN OPERA CHORUS GUESTS

Associate Conductor & Head of Chorus  Joseph Nolan

WEST AUSTRALIAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Acting Associate Concertmaster Semra Lee Smith 

Oh, you brute, Brutus!

Richard remembers his first collision with Shakespeare!

As a youth of fourteen, I was in a school class which had been set the task of reading and enacting “Julius Caesar” in English Literature.  I had entertained high hopes of being cast as the dashing Marc Antony, but alas, was allotted the more sombre role of Caesar.

This is what the teacher was hoping for ...

When it came to the assassination scene, the plotters were dispiritedly poking me with their wooden rulers. While I let out a few yelps, our teacher interrupted and called for 'more realism', and my classmates responded accordingly. To every enthusiastic  thrust of those wooden 'daggers' I yelled 'aarrgh' or 'aawrrgh', suppressing my natural inclination to shout 'ouch' as I finally moaned 'Et tu, Brute?' before 'expiring.' I sported the appropriate bruises for weeks thereafter.

Nevertheless, to this day, I still think Antony’s address 'O, thou piece of bleeding earth....' and his oration 'Friends, Romans, countrymen....' are two of the finest examples of prose ever written by Shakespeare or anyone else.

Shakespeare WA's Twelfth Night

Our president, Frances Dharmalingam, reviews Perth’s 2014 Shakespeare in the Park – Twelfth Night

This production seemed to be aimed particularly at a young audience, probably unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s works. The comedy was broad, reminiscent of circus and pantomime in delivery and costume, with much ad-libbing and (the most direct way to ensure audience participation) even dragging a hapless young woman from the front stalls on to the stage. I thought this redundant, and the extremely heavy-handed underlining of the more complex plot elements also seemed unnecessary. It could indicate lack of confidence in the performers’ ability to communicate, or lack of trust in the audience’s comprehension. However, I did like Aguecheek’s extra comment when asked his reasons for leaving Olivia’s house: ‘Beside the fact that it’s raining…’ which suited the damp evening very well. This was real ad-lib: spontaneous and appropriate.

Perhaps these introductory remarks are unduly critical, so I should hasten to say that there was much to enjoy.

Gracie Gilbert’s portrayal of Viola/Cesario was a delight. The voices of some in the cast were strained and forced, but hers carried easily in the demanding outdoor setting and every word was intelligible; but more to the point, she spoke the lines truly as if for the very first time with charming spontaneity and complete understanding. She had a deft comic touch and the details of Viola’s secret sorrows were treated with sensitivity. In Cesario, Gracie created a remarkably convincing boy, with subtle and appropriate mannerisms. Having watched this clever performance it was lovely to see Viola dancing with such feminine grace in the finale.

This play has very few ’spear carriers’ and not a very large cast. The characters are sharply differentiated, each quite individual, but together they must create a seamless whole. I was left with a sense of imbalance, with the more tender and romantic passages swamped by the coarser comic scenes, and it seemed to result from an imperfect mingling of two quite different styles of performance. On the one hand we had the twins and their sailor friends, Olivia, Malvolio and Orsino playing straight’, using the text to direct their characterisation, while on the other we had the trio of Belch, Aguecheek and Maria relying as much on quirky movement, odd voices and outlandish costumes as on their lines to create their characters. In style, Feste came somewhere between these two groups, as indeed he does in the script, and made good use of his remarkable voice for the many songs which he performed unaccompanied.

Malvolio, played by Nick Candy, was interesting. He conveyed his sense of moral rectitude with stiff posture, a strange stalking walk, and excessively precise diction and sustained this even as his excitement grew while reading the forged letter. He was certainly a “puritan” but with some kinky little tendencies unmasked with his ambitions. To confine him later in a dungeon was impossible in the park setting, so we have to accept his unusual imprisonment, with his head inside a suitcase. It allowed that episode to be passed over very lightly, with no time to consider the cruelty of his treatment.

The final scene of the play is challenging, requiring the resolution of so many confusions. It worked very well on this occasion with all misunderstandings clearly explained and a happy conclusion for everyone (except for Malvolio, of course). The cheery Jazz-age 1920’s style dance was an attractive end to a thought-provoking version of Twelfth Night.

Twelfth Night
Shakespeare WA
Director: Paige Newmark
Set and Lighting Design: Jake Newby
Costume Design: Ingrid Proos
Choreography: Jessica Waters
Sound: Warren Myers
Stage Manager: Simon Haydock
Cast includes: George Allen, Nick Candy, David Davies, Hannah Day, Gracie Gilbert, James Hagen. Andrew Kocsis, Stephen Lee, Nick Maclaine and Angelique Malcolm

Fraser Ave, Kings Park
Shakespeare in the Park 2014
www.shakespearewa.com
3 January – 1 February

Film review: National Theatre's Hamlet

Frances Dharmalingham, our president, saw this film recently in Perth. Here's her report:

I have lost count of the number of Hamlets I have seen and enjoyed, but the 2010 National Theatre production, screened last weekend, was one of the very best.

An interview with the director, Nicholas Hytner, preceded the performance.  He mentioned the totalitarian regime of Elizabeth I in which her spymaster, Walsingham, kept control through a pervasive spy network, and he then pursued the idea with reference to modern all-embracing surveillance techniques.  This theme was clear in the production, with security guards, walkie-talkies, cameras and shadowy figures half-seen by open doors or through murky windows:  throughout, a sense was established that speakers might at any time be overheard and reported to their disadvantage.

The play began with the almost unbearably loud sound of a jet plane taking off and flying away into the distance, a sound which punctuated the performance.  It was surprisingly threatening, serving to underline the fact that Denmark was on a war footing and this was further strengthened immediately with the midnight scenes on the battlements – so cold, so nervy, awaiting the arrival of an inexplicable phenomenon.

The ghost’s entrance was quiet, difficult to see.  At times the clever lighting made him appear almost transparent.  There were no melodramatic sound effects, no sepulchral echo, none of the usual 'ghostly' details.  This was a dead king who felt great anger and hurt not only at what had been done to him, but also because the crime was unrecognised and the perpetrator unpunished.  He spoke with complete realism and it was therefore the more believable that Hamlet should accept the whole incident as real. (Although, of course, he questions it in retrospect.)

Rory Kinnear in rehearsals for Hamlet at the National Photograph: Johan Persson

Hamlet was played by Rory Kinnear, whose powerful Iago I had seen only recently.  It is hard to imagine two characters more different, so I was looking forward to seeing his interpretation.  Hamlet seemed to me a terribly unhappy young man, not given the chance to mourn his dead father, feeling manipulated and not seriously respected at court, and verging dangerously close to clinical depression by the time Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrived.  The soliloquies were truly Hamlet’s thoughts.  We could see them working in his face, and the words, although perfectly audible, seemed almost projected from his mind to ours.  Kinnear’s technical virtuosity was admirable, but never intrusive.

All the characters were interesting and plausible.  Polonius, for example, was not the usual senile dodderer who would long since have been pensioned off.  He was of course annoyingly verbose, but still an experienced senior official.  Just occasionally he came to an abrupt halt, lost the track and floundered for a moment suggesting perhaps the onset of age-related dementia, which was far more believable than the sort of ‘lean and slippered pantaloon’ often portrayed.  The comedy inherent in his early scenes was gently brought out too.

Claudius really was a smiling villain, a full-time politician always aware of the media and his audience.  This was particularly emphasised in his soliloquy after the play, in which he tries to balance remorse for his crime with retaining the benefits of the crime.  I had always viewed this speech as the one time Claudius was sincerely wrestling with his conscience, but this Claudius had no conscience, apparently.  His words were rather like a rehearsal; there was an imagined audience, almost an imagined microphone and camera, as if he could not break the habits of a lifetime, and when he knelt to pray one knew very well that his attempt could not possibly succeed.

Gertrude was a middle-aged sexpot – very curvaceous, wearing clothes just too tight for good taste and a hair- style just a little too unkempt for the wife of a national leader.  The strain of events began to show as she drank increasingly recklessly, and this culminated in a clever touch of insolence as she defied Claudius and drank from the poisoned goblet.  Her great scene attempting to upbraid her son was remarkable for the extremes of mood displayed by both characters, from desperate sadness, to anger, to horror, and finally an extraordinary burst of hysterical laughter, quickly supressed, as Hamlet joked while dragging out Polonius’ body.

It was interesting to note that the visiting players really did take note of Hamlet’s instructions.  After the stylised, balletic dumb-show, The Mousetrap was performed without histrionics, simple and realistic.

Laertes’ attempted rebellion and the rapid movement of events to the finale proceeded with admirable clarity, though Laertes himself was less impressive than one might have wished.  His voice was hoarse and speech not always clear, suggesting that perhaps he had a cold, obviously a problem when a live performance is filmed.  However, he acquitted himself well in the final duel, which was staged quite simply but, after the unexpected cut, with convincing ferocity.

It must be difficult when speeches are very well-known for an actor to avoid triteness, but Horatio spoke his farewell lines to Hamlet with such natural sincerity as to be genuinely moving.  The arrival of Fortinbras and the English ambassadors could have been an anti-climax after such strong emotion but they served to bring the action to a dignified and respectful conclusion.  As the lights dimmed we heard, appropriately, the last jet plane take off and fly away, fading to silence.

The whole performance was marked by very fine acting and meticulous attention to the text, down to the subtlest nuance.  There was of course plenty of action, and it always arose from the text -- no distracting extraneous flamboyance; no leaping from balconies during the duel; no carrying the corpse cruciform and shoulder-high, even though we knew the body would be borne to the stage later.  Even Polonius and Claudius were dispatched with the minimum of fuss, but absolutely in accordance with the script.  The actors' intensity created for the audience a real sense of what Aristotle must have meant by catharsis.  An added bonus is that such a minute examination of such a well-known play leaves me with so many details to ponder for a long time.

The Oxfordian viewpoint

It seems that every year, more candidates for the True Identity of William Shakespeare are put forward Over 80 names have been suggested overall, with some of the more popular ones including Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Henry Wriothesley (the 3rd Earl of Southampton) and  Edward de Vere (Earl of Oxford).


The last-named (pic from Wikipedia at left) is one of the most well-supported, and one of his keen advocates, Alan Tarica, has written a commentary on the sonnets. Read in reverse order, they suggest a case for Oxford's authorship of the Shakepearean oeuvre at least as convincing as any other bardic conspiracy theory.

One might wonder why it's necessary to find another author - after all, the plays and poems were written so long ago that surely we might as well just enjoy them and not worry about who wrote them (and anyway, a pretty good case can be made for Will, the glover's son from Stratford-upon-Avon!) but each new theory brings with it food for thought and some interesting academic wranglings.

If you'd like to  check out Alan Tarica's case for the Oxfordian standpoint and his take on the sonnets, go to https://sites.google.com/site/eternitypromised/instructions - it's a slow job, though, as you have to click on each sonnet (the case is based on reading them in reverse order) to study Tarica's commentary.

Have fun!

Othello film in Perth - a review

Frances, our Fearless Leader, braved Perth's unseasonable weather recently to see the National Theatre’s production of Othello. Here is her take on the film.

The National Theatre’s Othello (shown on film last weekend) was the finest Shakespearean production I have seen in a completely modern interpretation (though I think Ralph Fiennes’s Coriolanus runs it close). Despite a completely faithful adherence to the script, there was not one jarring note or anachronism.

In a brief interview before curtain-up, the director explained that he wanted the cast to be able to speak as in the present, and indeed the performers made the text their own with never a false step.

The leading men – Adrian Lester as Othello and Rory Kinnear as Iago – were stunning, and were strongly supported by the entire cast. Iago burst on to the first scene already brim full of festering fury and jealousy, and this intensity was sustained throughout as the dreadful course of his revenge unfolded. Not only his stance and facial expression, but even his manner of speech brought to mind the old clichés of ‘coiled spring ‘ and ‘lighted fuse ‘, as he spoke with explosive force, outlining the grounds for his hatred. Othello appeared before the Venetian Senate calm and self-confident with an impressive dignity, clearly a man whose history gave him every reason to feel justifiably proud and to face anyone on equal terms. To watch his gradual destruction was desperately sad.

The two worked superbly together, and the long and difficult pivotal scene (Act 3 iii) in which Iago convinces Othello of his wife’s treachery was enthralling. This was no easy victory: Othello fought all the way not to believe, while Iago played him and reeled him in, and finally delivered the coup de grace.

The women were, as the director said, feisty, and Desdemona did not die without a fierce struggle. Emilia, played as a serving soldier, also exhibited an independent spirit and, when she finally realised Iago’s full guilt, railed against him powerfully.

The most admirable feature of this performance, for me, was the actors’ skilful delivery of the spoken word. Every phrase was thought through and meaningful, every subtlety fully explored and the emotional content modulated masterfully to support and extend the meaning of the words. Sometimes very well-known speeches or phrases can be too familiar to a listener, but here every thought was freshly examined; so, Othello’s famous description of his wooing was lightly handled, not weighed down unnaturally by the amazing imagery. Again, his self-pitying speech of farewell – to the plumed troops, the shrill trump, etc. – was no ‘set piece ‘ but a revelation of Othello’s whole past. Even ‘one that lov’d not wisely, but too well ‘ was re-examined. Altogether, every performer’s delivery allowed a listener to hear the play as if for the first time. They had taken the script and made it, and the characters, their own.