If an American leading man is better equipped with Shakespeare to bring Shakespeare to the public than Washington, I can’t think about it.
Well, the “public” can be to some extent – the new production of “Otilo”, which leads to Washington, now playing at the Ethel Berry Moore Theater, has broken the box office records on the power of orchestra tickets that sell a seat in more than $ 900. The lucky group of people who will see this “Otilo” will be attracted to Washington’s silk, Bard English flow, and the traumatic irony of Othlo’s basic understanding that they are being played by honorable, vanal Igie (an excellent Jack Gallen Hall).
But that’s all they will get. In a clumsy manner through director Kenny Levin, it makes little difference to this “Otilo” text to meet the text of the play. “Otilo” is “Otilo” – which is the richest and most wrenching of Shakespeare’s tragedy. It will require a lot of wrong output to completely damage it. But there may be some real risks to this fictitious wildly misunderstood production. Instead, this production only falls flat.
Washington, here, is the role of the title, a military general whose selection of personnel has incited Galnah’s schemeing underlings. The great tragedy of Otilo, maybe, is how easily it allows its misunderstandings to misunderstand it. The well -selected lie of the villain separated the marriage to Otilo’s Dysdamona (Molly Osbourne). The simple, brutal talent of the IGO scheme is the way it benefits from a particular fact. Otilo, for all of his own, is the second, in the white vanites in a special matrix of colorful man and barely controversial distrust.
It seems that they all provide plenty to Washington and Galnahl to work with. And, in fact, this “Otilo”, we have been notified by an expected symptoms as soon as the show begins, moves to “nearby”. Its roles are comfortable (Washington dress shirts in silicians) and modern military fatigue. Shakespeare has a hard novel to transpose something like the present period (for example, in the beginning of this season in Director Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet”), but, when done well, it gains some important insights about the change of human nature.
Instead, the “Otilo” sequence is now effectively known, less choice than refusal to choose. – In fact, in this potuler, old -fashioned riments have increased its effect. Here its non -script organization, though, reduces it. Its Otilo, already lacking a certain shape, looks like even initially, it is riding at a height, which makes it very inevitable.
If this production must be determined (breath) in the near future, why not add touchs to the staging that makes it clear that we are a step close to Destopia? Instead, there is a dominance of columns on the stage that has a Terra quota effect, but no one else. The world looks less color than waiting for the world Otilo and Iigo, as if Lyon has forgotten to put it in the first place. Other choices make such a misconception that it is strange: For the audience, many monopolies of Galina have acknowledged its desire for sabotage, and Otilo has been located under an eliminating light, while an important scene of violence is in the dark and a pillar behind. In both cases, the lighting works to hide the story, adding without any meaning.
Amid the landscape, both actors do their best. I first suggested the Excellence with Washington’s Line Delivery: He was designed to demonstrate a visit in the show late, for a moment, and stop the last scene, in which the actor gets stuck on the roof, was on the same back. When you address it straight and people, it is included in them, but not really, it has such a familiar brush energy, as if trying to move this fact in the past through the power of the power to move the past to another generation compared to all its colleagues. And the early chemistry with Washington’s Osbourne plays the role of his wife, despite an amazing difference in age, quite strong, that his later scenes are affiliated with a traumatic feeling of fraud. In fact, these scenes take advantage of all the 70 years of Washington on this earth, as it stands above the Dysdamona and speaks with an authority whose misguided beliefs have not earned.
That Washington’s authority shows a major idea of ​​production – to put two big stars in the center of the stage and trust that their ability and charisma will bring that day. And, for most parts, they do. No fan of Washington or Galnah will be disappointed with the actors. Levin gives two of his stars cooking, but has not stored its production with anything they are tasteing.
