REVIEW: In The Tempest and Othello, the Stratford Festival gets vengeful — and it rocks

Revenge, as a means to achieving true satisfaction, is a volatile thing.

Lashing out and punishing those we feel have wronged us can feel righteous, but can also ricochet and corrupt the person enacting reprisal, like a recoil on a fired gun. In theatre, the choice to pursue retribution or end the cycle via forgiveness is often what differentiates tragedy from comedy.

So it is with the Stratford Festival’s productions of Shakespeare’s Othello (at the Tom Patterson Theatre) and The Tempest (at the Festival Theatre), both of which meditate on the nature of revenge as an insatiable horror. The Tempest’s sorcerer Prospero (Geraint Wyn Davies), the former Duke of Milan, has the chance to torture the brother who deposed and exiled him 12 years ago on an enchanted island. Othello’s Iago (Evan Buliung), full of hatred after the title character (André Sills), his decorated commander, promotes Cassio (Jordin Hall) in his stead, seeks to destroy the Moor’s marriage and life. The two strong productions, seen as a double bill, make a compelling case against choosing vengeance, with director Haysam Kadri’s Othello an especially riveting and taut interpretation.

Arches preside over the sets of both productions, symbolizing the fragile or broken bonds between characters. The beautiful and elegant scenic design (by Julie Fox) of director Antoni Cimolino’s Tempest plunges audiences into a marine wonderland, full of colourful, oversized shells, with a central stone formation serving as Prospero’s command centre. In Othello, designer Brian Dudkiewicz gives us a series of suspended, broken metal arches, each snapped off-centre. Both shapes show erosion, but The Tempest presents the possibility of a natural bridge towards reconnection, and the man-made portals of Othello have rusted past the point of no return.

Cimolino’s Tempest is cinematic and expansive, while Kadri’s Othello is intimate and tense. The Tempest’s opening scene on a sinking ship is genuinely overwhelming; through thunder and lightning (Imogen Wilson is the lighting designer), the fabric of the boat’s massive sail becomes the ocean’s waves, before beautifully draining down through the stage as though a plug has suddenly been pulled from a bathtub. Some actors’ lines are lost in the roar of the storm, but the staggering sailors’ fear comes through clearly, and sound designer Ranil Sonnadora cleverly makes sure the noise drops during key moments of dialogue.

As Prospero’s wrath rages on the island, a promised banquet turns ghostly and nightmarish for the usurping duke’s retinue when a demonic creature bursts forth from the table. The vindictive omen contrasts sharply with the later balm of Prospero mending fences and giving his blessing to a union of the next generation, inviting in a celebratory processional of sea creatures that resembles an impressive theme park parade.

Prospero can be a difficult protagonist to admire, with his use of supernatural slavery and disdain for creatures he categorizes as baser than himself. Here, Wyn Davies shows us a kinder, self-conflicted Prospero; tempestuous, yes, but with the more caustic points of his anger well-worn and eroded like the set’s beachy stone arch. He presents Prospero’s thoughts of revenge as sensations that physically pain him, spasming and writhing as he contemplates giving into his worst impulses. In contrast, tender forgiveness is what sets him free, with even a tentative hug for monstrous Caliban (Jonathan Goad) that’s devastatingly gentle.

Marissa Orjalo’s sprite Ariel, spunky and commanding, rules the space from top to bottom, emerging from a sun-bleached piano in the sand or seeming to appear at an opening located high above the Festival Theatre’s stage. One can almost forget Ariel is at Prospero’s mercy — until his patience wears thin, and the spirit begs and whimpers for clemency.

Wyn-Davies links Prospero’s desire for revenge with a deep-seated desire for control that gradually relaxes. His early paternalism over his innocent daughter Miranda (Ashley Dingwell), putting her to sleep with a casual wave of his hand, transforms into warm admiration for her fortitude in the face of new experiences and her love for the King of Naples’ son Ferdinand (Dakota Jamal Wellman). Dingwell seems to blossom with her world’s expansion, effortlessly carrying a bundle of logs to help her intended, as though the weight of the past means nothing.

Fiona Reid’s gender-swapped Gonzala, dignified councilor to the King and sole court advocate for mercy and equality, raises the stakes from personal feud to a discussion of political ethos, as she tries to imagine a better world.

If Prospero’s manipulations come from high magic, Iago’s whisper directly into the ear, proceeding with clockwork precision. Kadri’s production is all lean, explosive action and textual clarity, making the inevitable journey of Iago’s metaphorical poison through Othello’s veins feel exciting and raw on the Tom Patterson’s thrust stage.

The two-faced Iago embodies dramatic irony, every line redolent with double meanings. Buliung leans into the character’s vicious humour in confidence with the audience, sarcastically fist-pumping and preening with self-satisfaction at the ease with which Othello accepts his efforts. He’s so entertaining that it’s easy to overlook his rotten core until a chilling moment where he grabs the wrist of his wife Emilia (Jessica B. Hill) when she playfully delays his progress for the briefest moment, coolly ready to snap the limb he sees as his property, if it gets in his way. (Emilia’s chance to blazingly snap back at his abuse in the final act may be the production’s most satisfying moment.)

Iago’s revenge is potent, but Othello’s treatment of Desdemona (Krystin Pellerin) is particularly brutal. Sills also wears two faces — the first full of expansive charisma and confidence as he boasts his character’s wife “had eyes, and chose me,” and the second volcanic yet somehow smaller, contracted in his incandescent rage. Sills’ Othello seems not only willing but eager to punish his wife for her supposed extramarital transgression; in claustrophobic contrast to Prospero’s embrace of Miranda’s growing worldliness, he gradually makes Desdemona’s world smaller and smaller.

Pellerin holds her own when passionately protesting her innocence, and it’s easy to see how this could have been a marriage of equals, particularly when she ascends the set’s stairs to observe the proceedings from above.

But Kadri exploits the height difference between the actors as they face each other, Pellerin seeming tiny next to Sills’ imposing figure and dressed in delicate, gauzy fabrics by costume designer Gillian Gallow. In the final act, even the heavily symbolic marital bed that initially seems expansive as Desdemona lies alone waiting for the inevitable gets more and more crowded as the tragedies pile up.

Kadri’s casting choices further emphasize the play’s betrayals. Changing Desdemona’s father Brabantio to mother Brabantia (Chick Reid) makes the character’s disavowal of her child less coldly draconian, but even more hurtful and intimate. Casting a Black actor as Cassio emphasizes the ugly racial dimension of Iago’s hatred, and Hall’s scenes pulse with tenderness for Desdemona, wariness around Iago, and quiet anguish as his mentor figure turns on him under the slightest provocation. Like the play’s pace, corrosion sets in quickly, nearly impossible to reverse after the bonds melt away.

Forgiveness advocate June Callwood wrote that we live in an “age of anger,” where “scalding thoughts” are easy to conjure, but are as like to burn us as our enemies. Stratford’s Othello neatly shows us the wages of staying reactively obsessed, while The Tempest offers a healing respite from today’s eye-for-an-eye mentality.

Othello and The Tempest run at the Stratford Festival until September 27 and October 24 respectively. More information is available here.

Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

WRITTEN BY

Ilana Lucas

Ilana Lucas is a professor of English in Centennial College’s School of Advancement. She is the President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association. She holds a BA in English and Theatre from Princeton University, an MFA in Dramaturgy and Script Development from Columbia University, and serves as Princeton’s Alumni Schools Committee Chair for Western Ontario. She has written for Brit+Co, Mooney on Theatre, and BroadwayWorld Toronto. Her most recent play, Let’s Talk, won the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival’s 24-Hour Playwriting Contest. She has a deep and abiding love of musical theatre, and considers her year working for the estate of Tony winners Phyllis Newman and Adolph Green one of her most treasured memories.

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