Othello in the Park

I was hoping to get in some Renaissance dance in Central Park last night, but that didn't work out, so instead I decided to try the standby line to see Othello at the Delacorte.

In case you didn't know, The Public Theater is currently performing free Shakespeare in the Park. Othello is playing until June 24th, and then Twelfth Night will run from July 17 to August 19th.

How easy is it to get tickets? Well you can wait in line or sign up for the mobile lottery. There's also free distribution throughout the five boroughs. However, I just showed up at 7:30 and got a ticket. The further into the run, though, the harder it is to get tickets, so go soon.

Coming into the theater, I happened to run into Rob Stauffer, who I met last year at the Shaw conference in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Small world! Unfortunately, I didn't bring a sweater, as I'd figured I would keep warm dancing that evening. Big mistake! If you go, make sure you bring something in case it gets cool.

How was the show? Well, I'm afraid I got in trouble last year for posting on my blog about Julius Caesar before it opened, so I am unable to provide you with a review of how good the show is and how you absolutely need to see it. I can't tell you that Ruben Santiago-Hudson does a masterful job directing, nor that Chukwudi Iwuji, who was wonderful as Edgar in The Public's King Lear a few years ago, is an Othello you won't want to miss.

It's really too bad, because I'd love to tell you how Corey Stoll, who played Brutus in last year's Julius Caesar, was unlike any other Iago I've ever seen. Motell Foster was also in Julius Caesar, but due to the press embargo, I won't be able to tell you what a revelation it was to see him play Roderigo. Heather Lind's Desdemona will have to go without note, as will Alison Wright's memorable performance as Emilia. I loved Flor De Liz Perez in the Public Mobile's production of Pericles, but I just won't be able to tell you how good she was as Bianca!

I guess that means you'll have to see it for yourself. Hurry, though! Once word gets out, you won't be able to just walk up at 7:30 and get standby tickets like I did.

To sing a song that old was sung...

Last night, when the non-indictment came out in Ferguson, and subsequently all hell broke loose, I was at the The Public Theater watching their production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre by William Shakespeare. The world seems like it's falling to pieces these days, but this is a play about hope. It is precisely the type of theater we need in these dark times.

When I was in college, I was in a production of Pericles, playing a multitude of small roles. I still remember my lines, and I'm pretty sure that this present production, directed by Rob Melrose, cut every single one of them. No matter. This stripped-down version uses only eight actors and is condensed to be performed without an intermission. It worked, even without my beloved Escanes, Philemon, and Second Gentleman of Mytilene.

Shakespeare begins the play with the poet John Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer, setting the scene for what was even then an old-fashioned tale. The opening lines are beautiful:

To sing a song that old was sung,
From ashes ancient Gower is come,
Assuming man's infirmities,
To glad your ear and please your eyes.
It hath been sung at festivals,
On Ember Eves and holy ales;
And lords and ladies in their lives
Have read it for restoratives.

The "holy ales" here refers to "holy days" on which ale might be drunk, and both my college version and this production at the Public substituted the term "holy days" as it makes much more sense to the modern ear. The Public's production also had the actors sing these lines, using haunting music composed by Michael Thurber.

Though Gower appears periodically throughout the text to provide narration and commentary, Melrose divided Gower's lines amongst the eight company members, which worked just fine. Most scholars consider Pericles to be a collaboration of Shakespeare's, either an older play he reworked, or something he wrote together with a contemporary playwright. (The critic Charles Nicholl argues that George Wilkins wrote much of the piece.) Consequently, few people mind when a director takes liberties with the text.

One scene nearly everyone agrees Shakespeare wrote, though, is the fishermen scene at the beginning of the second act. There's plenty of social commentary in the lines, and none of this is lost on the Public's production. The first fisherman, when posed with the riddle of how fish live in the sea, responds: "Why, as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones."

Especially sharp was a barb in the fourth act, when the virtuous Marina (played by Flor De Liz Perez) tells a servant in a whorehouse that he should find some other occupation. "What would you have me do?" he responds. "Go to the wars, would you? where a man may serve seven years for the loss of a leg, and have not money enough in the end to buy him a wooden one?"

Fortunately, she does convince him to let her go, and Gower remarks:

Marina thus the brothel 'scapes and chances
Into an honest house, our story says.

I've always detected a faint whiff of irony in that last "our story says" as if Shakespeare were acutely aware of the improbability of the plot. However, in a tale as magical as this one, it is surely cynical to think so, and this is a play that conquers cynicism. It even sends the audience off with a benediction:

New joy wait on you! Here our play has ending.