Arts & Events

The title role in 'Othello'' has been performed by black actors since Ira Aldridge--son of a freeman minister, born in New York City in 1807, with a career onstage there by the 1820s, though it was only after moving to London that he played Othello, where he was praised by Edmund Kean, first in selected scenes, then the play in 1833; later touring Europe and Russia, fathering opera singers and dying in Poland, where he's buried. Perhaps the most famous black performer who took the role--and took it around the world--was the great Paul Robeson, whose Broadway version ran from 1943-45. Studio and radio recordings with photographs of Robeson as Othello as well as commenting on it are on YouTube.  

It's now customary for "The Moor" to be played by a black actor, though a few decades ago, great stars who weren't black played it in blackface, even on the screen--Orson Welles in 1951, Laurence Olivier in 1965. Only 30 years after Olivier's movie version would there be a black actor onscreen--Laurence Fishburne--playing the jealous Moor.  

Since its founding in 1989, Marin Shakespeare has produced 'Othello' once, in 2004, with Aldo Billingslea, an accomplished actor--and of color--in the lead. 

This season's production of the play, directed for the first time by artistic director and co-founder Robert Currier--onstage for just two more weekends--has been a media event: for the firat time, an alumnus from the company's Shakespeare for Social Justice program--which Marin Shakes managing director and co-founder Lesley Currier started in 2003 at san Quentin, since expanded to several other prison facilities and a juvenile program--appears onstage. And it's not in a bit part: Dameion Brown, released last year from Solano Prison after 23 years' incarceration, where he first performed onstage (as MacDuff in 'Macbeth,' directed by Lesley Currier, for a single performance), plays the lead role in The Bard's tragedy--and carries it with dignity and authenticity in voice and actions. 

Brown, who was set to play 'Othello' as a student in Tennessee, before both black and white parents' concerns caused the play to be cancelled, hadn't seen a professional stage production until the Curriers invited him after his release to Marin Shakes' 'Richard III' last year--and Brown has said he was enthralled. Invited to audition, he let the Curriers know of his conviction to appear someday as Othello--and they, too, were convinced, working intensively with Brown and the cast and crew to make it happen. The level of attention, of focus by all, in particular the Curriers (and director Bob Currier's lifelong theatrical experience and sensibilities come out finer and more magisterially than ever before) alone make it an engaging--absorbing!--show ... 

There're many reasons to catch this production, the finest I've seen in years ofreviewing Marin Shakespeare. The entire cast becomes an ensemble, with some outstanding individual performances. Jeff Wiessen is a splendid Cassio; two actors East Bay playgoers will recognize--Cassidy Brown (Iago) who's long been associated with Shotgun and Elena Wright (Emilia) turn in the best performances I've seen them give. (Cassidy Brown's "against-type" casting--he's been mostly known as a comedian--proves crucial and brilliant, revealing a side to Iago that would be more familiar to audiences of Shakespeare's time than ours, the comic schemer, a subtle undercurrent in his deliberately unexplained destructive conspiracy, directed at Othello's Venetian wife Desdemona with intent to topple their love, marriage, Othello's career, their lives ... ) 

The pacing is remarkable in its brisk, almost ironic rhythm, impelling the dialogue and action forward as the slow machine of revenge for an unknown slight works its way through various, often contradictory moods, scene by scene--and the wildly conflicting moods of the Moor himself. 

It's a remarkable presentation that gets across the shape and sense of one of Shakespeare's best-known stories, with all the word-play, action and conflict--internal as well as out in the open--a Shakespearean tragedy entails ... not something always seen, even in otherwise satisfying productions. 

Fridays through Saturdays at 8, Sundays at 4 through September 25 at Forest Meadows Amphitheatre on the campus of Dominican University, 890 Belle Avenue, san Rafael (about seven blocks north of the Central San Rafael exit off 101.) $10-$35. 

marinshakespeare.org or (415) 499-4488 (Forest Meadows is an outdoor theater; matinees can be very warm, evening shows cool and breezy. Cushions are available for a dollar rental. Picknicking's encouraged.)