Like the wonderful theater year just completed, 2002 in Charlotte is beginning auspiciously. Once again, it’s the Chickspeare banditas who are playing a key role in delivering the igniting spark. Last January, they turned the local scene on its head with “the play where you move from room to room,” Maria Irene Fornes’ Fefu and Her Friends. This year, they’re combining with BareBones Theatre Group in a presentation of Paula Vogel’s Desdemona at the Off-Tryon Theatre. Less outre than Fefu, the current Des is no less significant. The confluence of the three little theater groups in one enterprise marks the high point in the first season of Charlotte’s Off-Broadway, a joint marketing effort bankrolled by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Arts & Science Council.
Adding extra pizzazz to the headlining three-week engagement on Cullman Avenue is a trio of Saturday night “Othello-thons” beginning at 8pm. On these special evenings, Des is preceded by concert reading of Othello, adapted and directed by Lydia Arnold and starring CL’s reigning Theatreperson of the Year, April Jones.
While it isn’t desperately important for you to know Shakespeare’s Othello before watching Vogel’s Desdemona, it definitely helps. Besides, the script-in-hand reading flashes you back to the original Chix mission: all female, all Shakespeare, all the time.
If you’ve seen or read Othello before, dramaturg Carol Butler’s opening intro and synopsis may strike you as a bit of overkill. Once the reading begins, the compact storyline remains clearly in focus — and the justification for the Chix mission becomes manifest. Among the longest roles penned by Shakespeare, women are totally shut out of the Top 10. Two of the longest — and juiciest — are to be found in Othello. The title role ranks number six on the list, and the mighty warrior’s cunning nemesis, Iago, ranks number three, behind only Hamlet and Richard III.
Watching Joanna Gerdy take on the evil ensign, I’m certainly convinced that actresses can scale such Everests. Gerdy wraps her sinewy arms around nearly all of Iago, savoring his corrosive wit, his sullen resentment, his resourceful opportunism, his macho arrogance, and his slimy double-dealing. The only missing elements are the fires of his jealousy and the full intensity of his hatred — partly because of the severe 70 percent abridgment and partly because Gerdy’s immobile most of the time.
April Jones has indicated that she’ll be switching off to Iago next weekend and reverting back to the Moor for Othello-thon Three. Meanwhile, she’s demonstrating the challenges and the glories of the tempestuous general. You’ll find a considerable amount of grit and steel in Jones’s portrayal, but not surprisingly, she still comes up more than a little short in conveying the mighty Moor’s stony confidence and his sheer intimidating presence in the early going. That’s a storehouse of power that must be gathered for the proud general’s disintegration to be truly horrifying.
But Jones makes us feel the depth of Othello’s softer emotions more softly. When it comes time to throttle Desdemona, the war between tender and bloody emotions actually seems to be won by the chieftain’s gentler side. That’s largely because of the undimmed luminosity of Desdemona (number eight among the Bard’s females), achieved through her unrelenting respect for the Big O and her angelic ability to mix pity for herself with pity for her duped husband’s ultimate damnation.
Karen Doyle Martin isn’t ideally framed for a truly naive Desdemona, but she recaptures the spirit well enough. Closer to the mark are Ann Lambert as Cassio, the patsy Iago supplants in Othello’s favor, and Kim Hurst as Cassio’s strumpet, Bianca. Lolly Foy, as Iago’s ill-used wife Emilia, broke my heart with her anguish in the closing scenes — more than Othello and Desdemona combined.
Usually, props are taboo at staged readings. But with a comedy to follow subtitled A Play About a Handkerchief, Arnold and her cast can’t resist tossing that hanky around. A welcome dab of comic relief.
Vogel visits a ferocious retribution on the leading males in Shakespeare’s melodrama, barring them totally from her retelling. Just don’t expect Desdemona to be a cavalcade of righteous feminist rants. Giving the dramatis personae a vigorous reshuffle, Vogel casts Iago aside as an arch double-dealer and awards that distinction to Des. To hear her tell it, Cassio may be the only man in Cyprus who hasn’t cuckolded the clueless Othello.
Des is now intimately acquainted with Bianca, the bawd who receives the fatal hanky. She turns tricks at B’s place every Tuesday night. In fact, Bianca breezes in to the backroom of Othello’s palace so she divvy up Des’s earnings for the past week. Amid the heated action that ensues, Des actually gets her precious handkerchief back! Can Vogel still contrive to preserve Shakespeare’s tragic ending?
Leaving that question hanging, I’ll say that this is certainly the tightest, most brightly polished effort the Chix have ever hatched. Scenery by Brian Ruggaber, humble by PAC standards, is among the finest ever built at Off-Tryon. And the costumes by Foy, Lambert, and director Julie Janorschke are absolutely lavish by Chix standards.
I daresay Lorraine Larocque, CL’s Newcomer of the Year, perfectly fits the profile Vogel envisioned for the title role, with an angelic face of an authentic naif and the diminutive size that Othello could crush as easily as a butterfly, coupled with the ability to freely spout filth and licentiousness without a wince or a blush.
Larocque delivers her best comic work since she was the foul-mouthed Slippy Helen in Cripple of Inishmaan exactly one year ago — this time with an uppercrust British accent. Still, I wish Janorschke had egged her on to even greater excess and variety.
Another two weeks of interaction with her co-stars may have the same effect. The contrast of accents is already devastating. As Des’s unlikely “mate,” Nicia Carla gives Bianca a Cockney accent as thick as week-old porridge. Laura Depta’s upright Emilia, eyeing an upgrade from her current scullery drudgery, mouths her platitudes and pieties in a colorful Irish brogue.
Tossing in a limp that swivels her ample frame about 10 degrees with every other step, Depta delivers a performance so pure and concentrated that I found it difficult to keep my eyes off her. For many reasons, Depta’s seething resentments peak with the arrival of Des’s harlot pal. Emilia considers herself far above the degraded Bianca, while Des takes exactly the opposite view. Carla prances into the palace without a trace of presumption, eyes tilted upward in wonder, mouth agape with a horsey smile. An utter delight at first. Soon enough, we find that Carla’s fuse is about as short as Iago’s much-maligned wick.
Is she the social outcast that Emilia despises or the emancipated capitalist Desdemona admires? Bianca herself seems woefully conflicted and confused on the subject — possibly because a male-dominated world has left her too hardened and ignorant to have an answer.
Sabrina Blanks’s lighting design is far from perfect, too obvious and obtrusive. But the trio onstage is so close to flawless that the fidgeting in the light booth hardly matters. A fine evening of theater, one that is already awakening good crowds to the goodies regularly on display at Off-Tryon. Paired with the Othello-thon appetizer, this is Charlotte’s new Off-Broadway at its finest.
The Symphony came back from its brief holiday with a gallop and a roar — or so it seemed, as guest conductor Junichi Hirokami lifted his baton and launched into the Best of Brahms concert. Despite some initial dyspepsia from the brass, the familiar Academic Festival Overture sounded faster, bolder, and more spontaneous than usual — which is not always a good thing. Wind solos, though fine individually, seemed ill-matched dynamically.
But what fun watching the little guy throwing his cues and radiating his enthusiasm! Eventually, it all coalesced in an irresistibly rushed ending played with exceptional clarity.
The spell didn’t last. Through the first five segments of Mr. B’s Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn, despite Hirokami’s increasingly eccentric baton work, the CSO sounded utterly moribund. Some positive propulsion finally surfaced when the ensemble frisked through two successive uptempo variations. The ensuing slowdown brought a power meltdown. Another powerful finale salvaged the performance as the uninspired ensemble broke for intermission.
From a listener’s standpoint, it was Anton Kuerti to the rescue. Perhaps the CSO focused a disproportionate amount of rehearsal time on Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, but it was the only fully satisfying piece of the night. Kuerti tore into the piece with relentless concentration and fire, eclipsed here and there by silvery runs and sweetly voiced chords. A more subdued Hirokami kept Symphony focused at the same high level.
Particularly impressive was the brace of solos complimenting Kuerti in the middle movements. Hollis Ulaky’s oboe was achingly forlorn, Alan Black’s cello warm and empathetic. During the pauses between movements, Hirokami couldn’t help smiling back at the soloist. The joy and confidence of bringing it home seemed to add buoyancy to Kuerti’s closing allegretto. So satisfied was he taking his bows that he lowered the top of the Steinway for the audience to get a clearer view of the players.
For half a concert, they were brilliant.
Before Victory Pictures found a permanent home, they brought a low-budget production of Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor to Theatre Charlotte late in 2000 that occasionally sparkled with a raggedy charm. Now after a couple of postponements, Vic Pix has revived their Doc at their new permanent home in the Matthews Community Center.
Everything about the new production is markedly improved, beginning with Vic Pix’s smoothly shifting set designs. With a dozen segments bringing Chekhov tales to life — a couple of which sport multiple locations — passable sets make a difference.
So do passable performances. Among the most-welcome new recruits to the cast, director Michael Simmons has lured Craig Spradley, Ryan McCurdy, and Alan Nelson. Cindy Higgins is the most satisfying of the women, ranging from streetwalker to Chekhov’s famed Three Sisters.
If you saw the poor excuse for a narrator at the Theatre Charlotte version, you’ll be particularly grateful for Nelson. Besides handling the narrating chores with poise and charm, Nelson morphs into a stupid husband in “The Seduction,” his own father in “The Writer,” and on opening night — when Bill McNeff was indisposed — the gouty banker in “The Defenseless Creature.”
Hopefully McNeff will return this week. His hapless Sexton in “Surgery” — a walking, talking, howling toothache — was an instant classic. Meanwhile, Spradley proves he should be doing more comedy, particularly as the bumbling Cherdyakov in “The Sneeze” and as the Army Man in “The Arrangement.”
Alan McClintock returns as Spradley’s silly adversary, the Navy Man — more effective there and in everything else he tackles. There’s a spot more suave arrogance to his Lothario in “The Seduction.” And with Nelson as his mark, plus a pretty nifty waterfront set, darned if they don’t almost make “The Drowned Man” a treat.
Head out on the Outerbelt for some truly medicinal comedy. It’s nearer than you think. And better. *
This article appears in Jan 19-25, 2002.
