WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE's
Adapted for a cast of five actors
by Heldor Schäfer
Although Othello, The Moor of Venice was first performed four centuries years ago, the play speaks about our age as much as it did about the era of Elizabeth I. Racial prejudice, political favouritism, wife abuse, sexual inequality - all of these issues were addressed by the Bard in his fast-moving, single-plot tragedy. The fact that the setting is the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean Sea (then as now a military powder keg) only adds to the tension. Yet this is largely a story of loyalty and love that prove all too frail in the face of the merciless onslaught of intrigue and jealousy.
My adaptation calls for five actors portraying six of the most compelling characters of the play: Othello, Iago, Desdemona, Brabantio, Cassio*, and Emilia. The performers also double as members of a Greek chorus, moving the action with a peculiar rhythm and sinister purpose.
Everyone seems to be in a holiday mood, for Othello, the commander of the country's armed forces, is getting married. But soon it becomes clear that there are some who wish him ill.
At first it seems of little consequence when Iago, a lowly ensign, shows disdain for his friend Cassio's promotion as Othello's lieutenant. After all, the general is a man who exudes confidence. Even when a gang of hoodlums comes to arrest him, for having eloped with the youthful Desdemona, he stops them in their tracks with a terse, "Keep up (sheath) your bright swords, for the dew will rust them."
Othello gets to keep his prize but is sent into battle to intercept the vast fleet of the enemy Ottoman Empire. His lieutenant Cassio at his side, he entrusts his new wife to no other than "honest Iago" whose wit entertains Desdemona but whose hatred of Othello becomes increasingly apparent.
After a fierce storm batters men and ships and scatters the invading Turkish armada, Othello comes home to tranquil island life and married bliss. However, with a few swift strokes he is thrown off course as Iago begins to undermine the general's heretofore unshakable confidence:
"Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:
She has deceived her father, and may thee."
Shakespeare shows us a sympathetic hero with all his weaknesses: someone who is prone to bragging yet commands the respect of enemies and friends, one who is short-tempered and superstitious, yet passionate.
Cassio, who had been the go-between during Othello's courtship of Desdemona, is the epitome of loyalty. Yet he too has an Achilles heel, and Iago is quick to exploit the lieutenant's weakness for strong drink as his plot of intrigue gathers in speed and complexity. Othello, the Moor, immersed since childhood in primitive spiritualism, now has a world of illusion created for him by Iago. Imagining Desdemona affair with Cassio drives mighty Othello to near madness. Seeing himself as judge of his own life and the lives of those he commands, he destroys not only the person he loves and worships, but even his own soul.
While Desdemona shows strength of character and persistence when taking on her wronged friend Cassio's cause, her tragic flaw is that she excuses Othello's jealous rages. Iago's wife Emilia, on the other hand, fights back. Long devoted to her husband and tolerant of his whims, she makes a courageous last stand when she recognizes his duplicity and the fact that she, in one weak moment, has become a co-conspirator.
The five actors doing double duty as chorus, are at times a gaggle of soldiers and at others a group of spirits only seen in the minds of some of the main characters - depending on what mental state these characters are in. But while this capricious chorus plays decoy, instigator, and temptor all in one, it never relieves the characters of their own moral responsibilities.
______________
*In this adaptation's premiere performance at the Victoria Shakespeare Festival (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), Cassio was played by a female actor. Another female actor doubled as Emilia, Iago's wife, and as Brabantio, Desdemona's father.