Othello

Review by Michaella Francom
Drama, Physical/60m

I am in no way an authority on live theatre. The cinema is my background and my passion, so  I’m accustomed to experiencing the dramatic arts through the edited and multi-angled presentation of film. I emphasize this fact in the hopes of being forgiven for the following statement: I generally shudder at the prospect of: a) seeing high school productions; and b) enduring often poorly-executed modernized adaptations of Shakespearean classics.

Which is why (and I’m not proud to confess to this) I went into the Trinity Pit Stop Theatre Co.’s production of Othello with a distractingly large dose of skepticism. The production combines my two worst fears: a hyper-modernized Steampunk aesthetic with a presumably unseasoned teenage cast and crew. I anticipated a massacre, or at the very least, a bumbled handling of a classic.

If there is an equivalent to putting one’s foot in one’s mouth regarding private thoughts: consider my experience to have been precisely that.

I was blown away by this performance. The opening really is pure genius. If you’ve ever been on the second or third tier of Barrymore’s on a busy night, either grabbing a drink or having a quick sit, you know exactly how it felt to be several rows back from the stage experiencing the energy of this production. From the first moment, with blasting, energetic music, club-like lighting and cheering, whooping cast-members dancing and shouting in the aisles, the audience was instantly immersed in the world on-stage. Brilliant.

Now the complexities of any Shakespearean work are always a challenge: irony, duplicity, and character development, all originally written to mature in the span of a 3+ hour show. Hence my cynicism regarding condensed and fundamentally altered productions.

So praise be to the writers behind this show!! The Trinity Pit Stop production of Othello has a mere 1-hour running time, and while not perfect, I felt the company’s synoptic version of the story was very well treated.

Truthfully, for anyone coming in as a complete stranger to the storyline, I believe the production would have been a bit confusing and disjointed, since the characters’ relationships and motivations were somewhat disconnected and hard to follow.

However in this day and age, seeing as the audience was likely at the very least familiar (if not intimate) with this play, this greatly pared-down approach did not need much fleshing-out.

Furthermore (and here is where I place my mental foot firmly in my mouth) I was blown away by the acting! If not for the tenor of their voices, which betrayed their young ages, I would have never suspected that I was watching pre-college-aged performers. Their projection was exceptional, their action/reaction dynamic extremely natural and of-the-moment. There were one or two instances where lines seemed to have been delivered pre-maturely, causing a kind of haltered overlap in the conversation, but the actors were never flustered and recovered professionally.

The set and costumes were delightfully appropriate to the Steampunk genre without going so far as to distract from the words and actions that are the essence, naturally, of any Shakespearean play.

My only real qualm was with the lighting at certain points. Whether the actors missed their marks or the lighting itself was not properly adjusted to the space, there were repeated instances where the entrance/exit of characters via the theatre’s aisles left the actors literally in the dark and some instances on central stage as well where it was impossible to see the faces and gestures of the main action taking place.

Overall however, I offer the perhaps clichéd praise: ‘Bravo!’ I might not be entirely reformed, but this production of Othello has opened my eyes to the potential greatness of modernized Shakespearean adaptations. Only in the right hands of course, but this was certainly the case with this production. As I’ve said now to several friends and fellow critics, it was not just “good for a high school production” but hands down excellent by any, including professional, standards.

Othello directed by Stavros Sakiadis and presented by the Trinity Pit Stop Theatre Co. is playing at Venue 3 – Academic Hall on Saturday June 28 at 2:00 pm. Tickets are $10.