Theater: KOed in Venice

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OTHELLO by William Shakespeare

James Earl Jones has run in, or at, Othello six times, but he has never quite caught up with either the play or the part. Not that he is wholly to blame for that. To a modern audience, Othello is Shakespeare's least accessible tragedy.Only in Latin countries and certain portions of the Mediterranean basin is Othello's brand of feverish, murderous jealousy readily comprehensible. Othello regards every aspect of Desdemona's being as an extension of his personal honor. By contrast, playgoers are instantly at home with Iago's Machiavellian manipulations.

If Othello is not to seem a monumental ninny, as he does in this waterlogged production at Broadway's Winter Garden theater, the radiance of the lines must lend him luster. Jones' delivery has the dutiful monotony of a woodsman felling a tree. As Othello's white bête noire, Christopher Plummer's lago exudes not "motiveless malignity" but preppie mischief. He is the class bully taunting and toying with the class dunce. Dianne Wiest's Desdemona looks fair and beauteous, but when she opens her mouth, she sounds like Jack Benny's violin. Some high school teachers instill in their students a dreadful, lifelong fear of Shakespeare, and this production it.

— By T.E. Kalem