Othello (review)

In Shakespeare in Performance: Othello, Lois Potter covers a remarkably wide range for such a slim volume,tracing early modern to contemporary stage productions and films, including operatic adaptations and cinematic offshoots. Potter sketches out a broad overview of Othello on stage and screen and then focuses in on specific, influential productions, providing detailed descriptions and keen observations of their theatrical and cultural contexts.

Potter is able to cover so much material so economically in part because she organizes it so adeptly.Following an introduction outlining sources, textual issues, dates, and early stage history, the book is divided into two main sections, with actor Paul Robeson as the point of division. The first section, "Othello before Robeson," includes four chapters: each of the first three focuses on one of the play's main characters (Othello, Desdemona, or Iago) and the performance traditions connected with that figure; the fourth chapter centers on modern productions of the play. Potter first surveys the influential actors who played the "heroic" Moor in Othello-centered productions from the Restoration to the nineteenth century. Rather than treating their performances in isolation, Potter examines how these actors played the role within the contexts of the actor/manager theaters and their own careers, comparing their portrayals of Othello as the stage "hero" or "lover" to their other non-Shakespearean

Similarly, in the next chapter, Potter focuses on the Desdemona-centered productions, most of which were heavily influenced by operatic forms, traditions, and conventions. Potter contrasts these European productions, in which the pathos of Desdemona took precedence, with those of the English stage tradition, in which the part of Desdemona was often drastically cut, trivialized, or upstaged by Emilia. As Potter notes, Desdemona became a frustrating heroine even for the likes of Helen Faucit and Ellen Terry. In both traditions, though, the visual depiction of the suffering Desdemona seemed most to create the effect of tragic pathos. This visual dimension also figured heavily in Iago-centered productions, as actors often played the villain by employing stock looks and conventional gestures drawn from an inherited visual iconography of "villainy." Even so, Potter explains, Iagos came in various shapes and sizes. Mainly, the role was defined in opposition to the hero (Iago = "intellect" / Othello = "emotion") and was often played by actor duos who alternated the roles each performance. Sometimes Iago emerged as the driving force of the tragedy, especially when portrayed by actors in a more naturalistic style, generating strong responses from audiences who loved to hate the villain. These performances laid the groundwork for modern productions informed by psychology, as in the "pathological Othellos," or by literary criticism, as in F. R. Leavis's "antitheatrical" interpretation of the play. The latter notably influenced Laurence Olivier's Othello on stage and film.

In Part Two, "Robeson and after," Potter begins by comparing the careers and tracing the legacies of actors Ira Aldridge and Paul Robeson. Aldridge and Robeson responded differently to being a black man cast in a role written to be performed by white actors in blackface for white audiences. Aldridge, who had limited freedom as an actor in an actor/manager-run theater, often entertained white audiences by mimicking black stereotypes when playing the Moor—although perhaps with an ironic edge. At first, Robeson also played stereotypical roles for predominantly white audiences, but later he performed Othello with an integrated audience in mind. Interestingly, in the eyes of this mixed audience, Robeson's identity became inextricably linked with that of his character. He was said not to act at all in the part but literally to become Othello, so much so that white audiences experienced what Potter terms the "Robeson effect"—the feeling that in identifying with Robeson as Othello, the white viewer could see from the perspective of a "real" black man (106). Through her assessments of these two actors, Potter thus introduces the main issues at stake in modern productions of Othello: race and casting.

Potter continues her discussion of Robeson's...