Othello

(Photo: Vladimir Lupovskoy )

Russian Army Theater
Director Boris Morozov
Theater named after Evgeny Vakhtangov
Directed by Evgeny Marcelli

In the theater there is often a fashion for certain playwrights or even specific plays. Today, following the Moscow craze for Hamlet, a fashion for Othello has begun. The Army Theater was the first to play the premiere.
The actors of the Army Theater are good - nothing can be said here. One of the best is Gennady Krynkin in the small role of Brabantio, Desdemona's father. With restrained rage and then despair, he plays the humiliation of a father abandoned by his beloved daughter for some rogue. Krynkin plays the tragedy of betrayal worthy of King Lear, and this is the most clear tragic motive of the play. Alexander Mikhailushkin is good - small, nasty, fussy Iago; His wife Emilia - a calm, understanding woman - is beautifully played by Evgenia Glushenko. But the best of all, of course, is Dmitry Nazarov - Othello (pictured above), for which Morozov probably took on this play.

Usually wild and shaggy, Nazarov turned into a luxurious dark giant (more Arab than Moor) with an aristocratic narrow beard and gray strands in his combed-back hair. He is strikingly different from everyone else - with soft feline plasticity, stately restraint, confident strength and obvious human significance. But the most remarkable thing is how much he loves Desdemona. The ability to play love is generally rare in the theater. Nazarov has been given this. It is worth seeing how Othello is filled with light and cannot help but smile as soon as Desdemona appears nearby. In her presence, everything else loses meaning for him. Unfortunately, noble, self-confident love is only the first half of the play. That part of the role where doubt and jealousy begin is not very successful for Nazarov: he begins to roar, rush around and tear passion to shreds.

However, neither Nazarov nor other good actors can carry off Morozov’s ponderous and archaic performance. God knows what the director had in mind when he took on this play.

The case with "Othello" at the Vakhtangov Theater is the opposite. The interesting Tilsit director Evgeniy Marcelli, who is staging on this stage for the second time, composed a lot of things for the performance. Perhaps even too much. Here are the masks of the Venetian carnival, into which all the third-rate characters are turned, and the technique of a “scene on a stage”. And a heavily abbreviated text, where the love monologues of Othello, as if ashamed of his feelings, sound in the soundtrack, like an inner voice. And the notorious blond Othello himself (Vladimir Simonov) without any hint of “Moorish” makeup. And the modern, lively girl Desdemona (Anna Dubrovskaya), flaunting her bare belly. And the remarkably beautiful scene of her death in front of the mirror, where there is no classic strangulation, but only Othello’s caresses, during which bloody streams suddenly begin to flow down the glass, and Desdemona seems not to die, but freezes with a smile (pictured).

All this is there, but it doesn’t add up to the overall picture, and most importantly, it’s not supported at all by the actors. And what exactly is the problem of the sad Othello, as well as the brave intriguer Iago, played by Sergei Makovetsky, cannot be understood. And yet, since “Othello” is just beginning to be played at the Vakhtangov Theater, there is hope that when the director’s intention (if there was one) grows in the actors, they will play out, and the performance will take on meaning. In the case of the Army Theater, one cannot count on this.