That's enough of Othello

The performance of Othello that we saw at the Intiman Theatre last Friday was our third time seeing the tragedy of the Moor of Venice in less than a year. I think that's enough for a while.

The production was something of a bait-and-switch on the part of Intiman. When the season was announced artistic director Bart Sher was slated to direct. When Sher later announced his impending departure, they bagged the local production and brought in the "acclaimed" staging of the play produced by New York's Theatre for a New Audience and directed by Arin Arbus. Many of the players from that production did come west for the show -- with the notable exceptions of Othello, Iago, and Desdemona. I'm not sure you can say that's the same production. It's like you are bringing in the "acclaimed" cast of Some Like It Hot, except you couldn't get Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis.

That said, the show wasn't bad. Sean Patrick Thomas was eloquent as Othello and Elisabeth Waterston strong and loyal as Desdemona. But there wasn't really much fire between them. John Campion put on a hard, vengeful performance as Iago. (That's Waterston, Thomas, and Campion, l-r, in the Chris Bennion photo at right.) Trouble is, we've seen two way better interpretations of the character in the last year. Dan Donohue won the 2008 Wisey for Best Actor for his portrayal at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Mike Dooly was fabulous in Balagan Theatre's smart production directed by Ryan Higgins in December. Both of those Iagos were more complex and nuanced, charming really, and to my mind more likely to successfully be able to manipulate the other characters to do his ultimate bidding.

Interesting that Seattlest agrees with us about the Balagan production, except that they want to re-stage that one -- and "see if John Campion is free." Campion was sure the star of the show, as Iago is meant to be, but I'll take Dooly any day.

Othello runs at Intiman through August 9.

Balagan scores again with Marat/Sade

We're completely blown away by the fascinating work being done at the up-and-coming Balagan Theatre on Capitol Hill. Balagan's production of Othello last month was first-rate, and its new show, Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss and directed by Richard Clairmont, is a mind-boggling tour-de-force.

The full title of the 1963 play, originally written in German, is The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asulum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. That's a mouthful; we'll stick with calling it Marat/Sade, as TPAAOJPMAPBTIOTAOCUTDOTMDS is somewhat lacking as an acronym.

According to the program notes, de Sade often wrote and staged plays, with inmates as actors, during his commitment at Charenton. In a nod to that, Balagan's basement stage is enclosed in chain-link fence, and we the audience are the dandies of Parisian society come to see the shows by the loonies in the asylum. Though we're asked not to prod at the inmates through the fence around the asylum.

And it's quite an asylum. Even before the metophorical curtain goes up, the cast are ranting and raving about. There are 21 of them, and they're mostly all on stage all the time, so there's a lot of lunacy to watch. In the middle of it all Lyam White as de Sade was a sea of relative calm, even while being flogged, as he "directed" the play within the play, a debate about who are really the good and bad guys of the French Revolution. His toady, the Herald, who stuttered on his Fs, was played f-f-fantastically by Ryan Higgins, who directed Balagan's Othello. And Heather Roberts was downright spooky as Charlotte Corday, who assassinated Jean-Paul Marat (Jason Harber), a leading politician and journalist of the revolution.

At one point in the play Coulmier (Jonathan Wright), the director of the asylum, complains to de Sade that "You really can't call this education." But one of the things we love about Balagan is that it's smart. The program cover, for example, is a re-creation of the 1793 painting "The Death of Marat" by Jacques-Louis David. And the players are always in character, even, as my Sweetie, the Scorer notes, in the restroom during intermission.

About 3/4 of the way through the play it struck me that it was loaded with beautiful language, some of which I'd decided I had certainly missed because of the visual specacle of the production. That sounds like a good reason to go back again. That would offer the opportunity to see if a few opening-night giggles go away. Though maybe that was part of it; you never know what's going on in the minds of those loonies.

Check out Marat/Sade, playing at Balagan through Jan. 31.

The Moor the merrier

Back in early October Weisenheimer saw Othello at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and in a review written by my Sweetie, the Scorer, we opined that the Tragedy of the Moor was in the lower quartile of works by the Bard. Today, the young upstarts at Seattle's Balagan Theatre have us re-thinking that opinion. Last night we saw Balagan's production of Othello, directed by Ryan Higgins, and came away delighted.

Our main beef with The Moor is that for a supposedly great military leader he's awfully easy to dupe. But Mike Dooly's Iago gets inside the head of Johnny Patchamatla's Othello in an exchange my Sweetie points out from Act III, scene iii, in which Iago says of Desdemona,

She did deceive her father marrying you, and when she seem'd to shake and fear your looks, she lov'd them most.

Iago plays on Othello's own insecurities, planting seeds of self doubt about the Moor's worthiness to marry Desdemona in a way that we've never seen come off quite so well on the stage before.

Part of the reason may be that the Balagan cast has the advantage of intimacy. While at OSF Othello was played in the 1,200-seat outdoor Elizabethan Stage, Balagan is a tiny basement black box on Capitol Hill that might seat 100. Swordplay in your lap is theater up close and personal.

That is to take nothing away from virtuoso performances by Patchamatla and Dooly. Patchamatla has the main Othello prerequisite, i.e., fabulous pipes. He's pumped some iron in his time, too, and was a commanding presence on the stage. He was able to temper his jealous rage with some true feelings of remorse and sadness. Dooly makes his Iago the most nearly likable of any I've seen. He plays the villain with a true warmth and charm, and everyone he manipulates is his best, dearest friend. Sure, Iago is a cretin, but Dooly pulls some looks in the end as if to suggest this wasn't the way he wanted it to turn out at all; that he really wanted everyone to wind up with egg on their faces, not in a pile of corpses on Desdemona's bed. (The text doesn't support that interpretation; after all, it is Iago who, in Act IV, suggests that poisoning is too good for Desdemona and that Othello ought to strangle his wife.)

The set was spare, with the main props being several wooden boxes that served as modular furniture. In a great touch, director Higgins has Iago be the only one to move the boxes. As the villain manipulates all of the characters, so too is he the one manipulating the stage itself, getting all the boxes to where they need to be for each scene. Even during the prelude Dooly was wandering the stage moving the boxes from place to place. He was planning every step of the way.

The rest of the cast were solid and real. Weisenheimer would especially single out Nik Perleros as Cassio, Terri Weagant as Desdemona, and Jason Harber as Roderigo.

Sadly, the final performance of Othello is tonight. But Balagan shows great promise. It's a relatively new company being run by a youthful lot willing to go out on a limb. In January they'll be staging Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss. A play. Within a play. Within an insane asylum. Check it out.