REVIEW: Men’s corruption and women’s solidarity in a potent, stripped-down ‘Othello’

REVIEW: Men’s corruption and women’s solidarity in a potent, stripped-down ‘Othello’

Nelsito Gomez’s intense direction and a quartet of powerful lead performers bring out a complicated dignity beneath the bleakness of this brutal Shakespeare tragedy.

William Shakespeare’s Othello feels like the kind of play that shouldn’t have aged well: an especially brutal tragedy that deals with race, class, and gender-based violence, that often seems a step away from indulging in cruelty just for the sake of shock value. So it’s all the more impressive that this new production from C.A.S.T. (Company of Actors in Streamlined Theatre) remains resonant and affecting, even as it fully commits to its sharper edges. Rather than sanitize itself or over-emphasize its moral stances, it welcomes all its difficult contradictions and finds remarkable depth in what could have just been a numbing, overwhelming experience.

There’s certainly cynicism to Othello’s story of a malicious soldier orchestrating a series of betrayals and murders out of hatred for his general. But through Nelsito Gomez’s direction, at turns playful and unbearably intense, and a quartet of powerful lead performers, the production succeeds in bringing out a complicated dignity hiding underneath this bleakness.

No Escape

At The Mirror Studio’s intimate theater in the round—a plain, square area at the center, with simple props shuttled in from the corners—the play’s specific setting (supposedly Venice and Cyprus) matters less than how its characters inhabit the space together. It is, however, hard to grasp what the play is doing at first, especially during the frantic opening act and its abrupt scene changes. With so much suddenly happening without a defined sense of place or time, this Othello begins on a disorienting note that makes the stage’s emptiness feel like an unintentional absence of something, rather than a deliberate choice.

But as the play establishes its web of relationships and character flaws waiting to be exploited, its small, square area (production designed by Sarah Facuri) starts to adopt an atmosphere of its own. In such a confined place, these people can no longer escape each other’s jealousies and threats of violence. Gomez directs his performers around the space in a way that can at times come off feeling cluttered, but the discomfort is earned. The more that the characters hurt and manipulate each other, the more stressful it becomes to see them in close proximity, as if you’re trapped in the room with them.

An Unexpected Dignity

With the characters firmly in opposition against one another—Iago (Reb Atadero) setting into motion his plan to ruin Othello’s (Tarek El Tayech) reputation and his marriage to Desdemona (Gab Pangilinan)—the real nature of Shakespeare’s tragedy reveals itself. It’s not that bad things befall innocent people. It’s that these men, clearly still broken from their past wounds and rigid military lifestyle, are so willing to believe in the possibility of others being deceitful that they ruin everyone else in defense of their own ego. From this shadow of suspicion, the play spirals out to an inevitable, but no less horrifying, breaking point.

But what this production also captures with unexpected grace is the dignity of the victims in this story. Even in their moments of weakness, the two main female characters, Desdemona and her aide Emilia (Maronne Cruz), express such a wide range of feeling in response to the abuse at the hands of their paranoid husbands—exasperation, hopelessness, defiance, and somehow, enduring love. In an inspired and remarkably muted sequence, the two women (Pangilinan, determined but never naïve; Cruz, growing more cathartically brazen by the minute) sit in idle solidarity before metaphorically staggering back to their feet. It’s an essential moment that doesn’t make the violence any less shocking, but allows it to break through to a more meaningful place.

Even Othello himself, both the main instrument and target in Iago’s schemes, is granted some humanity as he’s converted into a fearsome, grunting monster. Though the character’s status as an othered person (originally, a dark-skinned man of African origin) isn’t too prominent into this production, this Othello remains compelling for how Gomez and El Tayech emphasize his ties to a tortured past—the “sad story” that helped him move above his station in life. At a certain point El Tayech bursts into soliloquy entirely in Arabic, his aggression hinting at a deeper spiritual battle eating away at Othello. This vulnerability is ultimately what’s exploited by Iago—played by a despicable, sneering Atadero, whose charisma swiftly turns into pure madness.

Feel Everything

But just because this production can accommodate so many sympathetic viewpoints doesn’t mean Gomez and his team have softened its most challenging, visceral parts. Intimacy coordination by Missy Maramara and surprisingly kinetic fight choreography make every strike and every grip by the neck feel almost too real for comfort. And Gomez’s uncompromising direction, with D Cortezano’s generous use of darkness, suffocate the set in constant dread, with the actors cowering or stalking about mere inches from the front rows. 

All of these different sides to Shakespeare’s work don’t just emerge on their own. C.A.S.T.’s Othello is a clear example of a production that didn’t just assemble the necessary talent, but took the time to think on how different aspects of the play may be understood differently today, and what meanings a diverse, contemporary audience might seek out in a work like this. And that doesn’t mean they’re pandering to any one demographic; if anything, this Othello is an invitation to feel everything, even that which you might disagree with.

 

Tickets: P1000
Show Dates: Oct 4–13 2024
Venue: The Mirror Studio, SJG Building, Kalayaan Ave., Makati City
Running Time: approximately 2 hours and 50 minutes (including a 20-minute intermission)
Credits: Nelsito Gomez (Direction), William Shakespeare (Playwright), D Cortezano (Lighting Design), Myke Salomon (Sound Design), Sarah Facuri (Production Design), Missy Maramara (Intimacy Coordination)
Cast: Tarek El Tayech, Gab Pangilinan, Maronne Cruz, Reb Atadero, Davy Narciso, Rafael Jimenez, Dippy Arceo, MC dela Cruz
Company: C.A.S.T. (Company of Actors in Streamlined Theatre)