Otello, and: Othello, and: Macbeth (review)

The 2008-09 season in Finland included three memorable productions of Shakespearean tragedy. Finnish audiences had the chance to compare two very different Othellos, one performed on a small stage in a refurbished factory in Tampere (Finland's second largest city and an old industrial center), and another on the main stage at the Finnish National Theatre in the capital city of Helsinki. Othello has been performed steadily in Finland since the first production at the Finnish Theatre (precursor to the Finnish National Theatre) in 1889, with productions in at least every decade except the 1950s. The high point of its popularity was just after the end of the second World War, when five productions were put up in various theatres between 1946 and 1948. Macbeth was the first Shakespeare play translated into Finnish, a very free adaptation done in 1834 by Jaakko Lagervall which set the play in Finland; it was never performed. A more faithful translation was done for the first performance of the play at the Finnish Theatre in 1887, two years before the first Othello. Before the 1960s, however, the play was hardly performed at all in Finland. Since then it has been second only to Hamlet among the tragedies, and judging by the success of the Q-theatre production reviewed here, its popularity seems assured at least for the time being.

Mikko Viherjuuri's Otello at the Tampere Theatre was an explosive and idiosyncratic adaptation of Shakespeare's classic-very free, yet somehow also true to the original. This Othello took place during a war, not one which conveniently ends when the main characters arrive to do battle, but one which pervades every moment of the action. According to the director's program notes, Othello was a mercenary soldier commanding the temporary headquarters of a separatist movement somewhere in the Mediterranean, where there has been a long and bitter war. In keeping with this war theme, Marjatta Kuivasto's set was a clay-colored bunker, with thick concrete walls, lined with small windows at the very top. There was a heavily-secured door both stage right and left towards the front, and a larger double-sliding door at the rear. The room was sparsely furnished with the kind of furniture that might be salvaged in a war-zone-beaten-up chairs and tables; wooden boxes and trunks; an old iron bedstead. On one wall was a sink and faucet, with a not perfectly reliable water supply. All the action took place in this single room...