Desdemona (Alanah Allen) and Othello (Eliott Johnson) share an intimate moment in Bard tragedy (photo by Carol Rosegg)
OTHELLO
Casa Clara
218 East Twenty-Fifth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through March 25, $29-$99
newplaceplayers.org
One of the myriad wonderful things about Shakespeare plays is how malleable they are, offering plenty of opporunity for productions to get creative by twisting, turning, and reshaping how the plot unfurls even when using the exact original dialogue. And it doesn’t have to be done in large venues with star-studded casts; smaller, more intimate versions by lesser-known companies can deliver new insights into narratives you thought you knew so well.
Such is the case with New Place Players’ splendid adaptation of Othello in Casa Clara, a former Kips Bay foundry built in 1848 that is now a four-story town house where photographer Clara Aich lives and works. The maximum audience size is only fifty, about half sitting in unmatched chairs on either side of the central, horizontal stage area, with the other half sitting in seats on both sides of the long, narrow entryway.
The walls are filled with drawings, empty frames, and ancient, classical-looking bas-reliefs Aich has collected on her travels around the world, giving the play a dramatic, old feeling, as it takes place during the Ottoman-Venetian Wars of the early 1570s. The atmosphere is enhanced by Shawn Lewis’s spare set, highlighted by a few rooms in balconies at the front and back of the “stage,” Jennifer Paar’s period costumes, and a chamber music score performed by Anna Bikales on harp, Daniel Keene on lute and gong, and music director, composer, and sound designer Flavio Gaete on viola, consisting of Renaissance consort music, including works by father-and-son Elizabethan court composers John and Robert Johnson, contemporaries of Shakespeare’s. The lighting is by Ethan Steimal, who incorporates two skylights.
Director Makenna Masenheimer and cultural competency consultant Ianne Fields Stewart waste no time establishing good vs. evil and exposing the racism of that era. Between 1596 and 1601, several Privy Council documents called for the expulsion and trading of “blackamoores.” In the opening scene, Iago (Conor Andrew Hall) appears wearing a black cape that evokes cartoon villain Snidely Whiplash, an animated mashup of wicked slavemaster Simon Legree and the dastardly Hollywood generic villain who ties damsels to train tracks. Roderigo (Nathan Krasner) is the wealthy white accomplice who does Iago’s bidding because he lusts after Desdemona (Alanah Allen), who is in love with Iago’s boss, military hero Othello (Eliott Johnson).
Bianca (Rose Kanj) and Cassio (Matthew Iannone) have at it in Othello at Casa Clara (photo by Carol Rosegg)
Iago pretends to be an honest and loyal man, but he is a deceiving master manipulator determined to take Othello down, at least in part because of rumors that Othello has slept with his wife, Emilia (Helen Herbert), who is Desdemona’s faithful attendant. “I follow him to serve my turn upon him,” Iago tells Roderigo. He also acknowledges, “I am not what I am.”
Roderigo and Iago alert Brabantio (Matthew Dudley), Desdemona’s rich politician father, that he must save his daughter from Iago’s arms at that very moment. “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe,” Iago advises Brabantio. “Awake the snoring citizens with the bell, or else the devil will make a grandsire of you.” What could be worse than having a grandchild who is part Black?
A showdown ensues in which Desdemona, a vision in a white gown, asserts her love for Othello, whose “otherness” is increased by his wearing a North African turban associated with Muslims. But Iago is not about to let a public declaration of love get in the way of his evil plans. He tricks Emilia into helping him foster the belief that Desdemona and Iago’s chief ensign, Cassio (Matthew Iannone), are having an affair. Cassio, meanwhile, is spending more and more time with Bianca (Rose Kanj), a courtesan who has fallen in love with him, but Cassio’s career comes first.
The players also include the forthright Lodovico (Topher Kielbasa), kin to Brabantio and Desdemona; the chief magistrate, the Duke of Venice (Ryan Joseph Swartz); Montano (Aaron McDaniel), the governor of Cyprus; Gratiano (Dudley), Brabantio’s brother; and various messengers, officers, senators, and townspeople. No matter what happens and what anyone says, Iago is determined to ruin Othello and Desdemona, doing whatever is necessary to keep his nefarious scheme intact.
New Place Players will perform Othello through February 25 at Casa Clara (photo by Carol Rosegg)
New Place Players have previously presented immersive versions of The Tempest at the 3 West Club in Midtown and the Players by Gramercy Park, Twelfth Night at the Casa Duse Supper Club in Park Slope, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Casa Duse, Villa Lewaro in Irvington, and the Players. Their Othello is worth seeing just for the environs; during the pandemic, I watched a stream of Group.BR’s 2018 Inside the Wild Heart, a live performance filmed at Casa Clara that you could now navigate through online using the interactive Gather Town platform, allowing you to experience different parts of Clarice Lispector’s play in different rooms at your own pace. It made me yearn to be in the actual space.
Othello is best enjoyed by sitting in the main staging area, where the actors make eye contact with audience members and come as close as possible physically without actually touching them. The cast got off to a slow start the afternoon I saw it; the production was delayed because two of the actors were out sick, leaving the company to scramble. Understudy Swartz took over the roles of Brabantio and Gratiano and was a standout; stage manager Kyra Bowie did extra duty by reading for the Duke of Venice on an iPad, her purple boots beautifully anachronistic.
The closeness between the actors, who are trained in the Lecoq movements, and the audience created an unspoken camaraderie, as if we were fellow citizens familiar with the characters and setting. The story unfolded with a clear, precise progression, the misogyny, classism, and racism unmistakable but not heavy-handed.
I’ve seen three productions of Othello since 2016: Shakespeare in the Park with Corey Stoll as Iago, Chukwudi Iwuji as Othello, and Heather Lind as Desdemona, Sam Gold’s adaptation at New York Theatre Workshop (Daniel Craig, David Oyelowo, Rachel Brosnahan), and a noh version at Japan Society, in addition to watching Orson Welles’s 1952 film (Micheál MacLiammóir, Welles, Suzanne Cloutier).
The show at Casa Clara was the first time I truly felt how terribly the women are treated, how they are assumed to be strumpets and whores who can’t make their own decisions and think for themselves. Iago, in full beard and mustache, repeats to Brabantio several times, “Put money in your purse,” as if women can be bought like chattel. Othello himself is all too quick to listen to Iago and distrust his devoted wife. We might have come a long way in four-hundred-plus years, but misogyny, classism, and racism are still all too real in 2023.