Othello in the Park

Shakespeare in Delaware Park is, any Buffalonian will tell you, one of the great things about our city. From mid June to the third week of August, every night from Tuesday to Sunday, hundreds of people flock to the hill behind the Rose Garden, thousands every summer, to see fully staged outdoor productions of Shakespeare’s plays…for free. And we’ve been doing it for 32 years.

We arrive with blankets, with lawn chairs, with picnic suppers and bottles of wine. When it rains, the company must shoo the stubborn audience away, explaining that it is too wet for the costumes, too slippery for the fight scenes and too dangerous for the lights and sound. At intermission, we generously give the actors contributions in singles, tens and twenties, because we want to keep this festival, unique in the nation, going.

The current Delaware Park offering, Othello, directed by festival founder Saul Elkin, bears the signs of a festival in its maturity, as it pulls on some of the best talents in the city, across generations. This is one of the most handsome and satisfying productions I have seen in the park.

Othello is the story of a Moorish general in Venice who has recently eloped with Desdemona, the fair daughter of a Venetian senator. Othello’s ensign, Iago, is bitter that the general has chosen Cassio and not himself for his lieutenant, and so he plots to convince the Moor that his wife Desdemona has been unfaithful to him with the other man. Reacting to purely circumstantial evidence, Othello becomes wildly jealous. It ends badly for everyone.

I have often described Buffalo’s pool of actors as an extended city-wide acting ensemble. Shakespeare in Delaware Park is an important component of this dynamic, for few other cities can offer local actors such frequent opportunities to appear in the great plays of Shakespeare, in age-appropriate roles.

The flip side of this coin is that when a role cannot be filled locally, a visiting artist must catch up from behind, working with fellow cast members who have, typically, worked together often before, on the very same stages; who know each other’s quirks and tricks; and who even studied with the same acting teachers.

When I heard that the search for an actor to play Othello was to extend beyond Buffalo to New York, I had a sinking feeling that this did not bode well.

Happily, Jolie Garrett, our visiting Othello, is an actor of great vocal prowess who reads the role with impressive power and refinement, and walks the part with great dignity and grace. It is a performance focused on the clear interpretation of the speeches, and most notable for the way it sounds, mellifluous and melodic.

Othello is often presented as if it were an extended two-hander, with Othello paired not with his Desdemona but with his wicked ensign, Iago. So coveted are the roles of Othello and Iago that in another time, Edwin Booth and Henry Irving alternated in the parts; as did Richard Burton and John Neville, and numerous others. The pairing of Paul Robeson with Jose Ferrer is so celebrated that it is easy to forget that the great Uta Hagen was their Desdemona. The pairing of James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer is so famous that we forget that the doomed lady in that production was Dianne Wiest. Laurence Olivier’s too easily forgotten Desdemona was none other than Maggie Smith, who was succeeded by Billie Whitelaw.

Garrett is lucky to have, for his Iago, one of Buffalo’s most highly regarded Shakespearean actors, Tim Newell, who plumbs the role for all its medieval villainy and humor. Newell is bold in his comic choices and especially effective in his scenes of most nasty duplicity, as when he bullies his lackey, Roderigo, played by the less experienced but entirely enjoyable Peter Meacham. Newell is most memorable, of course, in his deliciously unseemly scenes with Othello, prodding the man on to his self-destruction by planting salacious images in his mind.

The strength of this Othello does not lie in its subtlety of interpretation or its psychological complexity. We are given a faithful and frankly rather old-fashioned rendering of the play, in a production that is, perhaps, all the more pleasing for that. The performances are confident, the turns of the plot are clear, the motivations are uncomplicated.

The women in this production hold their own with striking skill and distinction. As the fair Desdemona, Rebecca Elkin, the daughter of the director, soars well beyond the status of legacy casting. Her characterization is lovely in its vulnerability, yet stalwart in its resolve. She fuels our sense of Othello’s tragedy by emphasizing her total and adoring pliability to his tragically irrational will, and brings new insight with each of Desdemona’s scenes.

There is a remarkable moment in the final scene of the play when, as handled by the remarkable Eileen Dugan, the entire play seems to be about Iago’s wife, Emilia. By the time she gears up to her frenzied and contrary, “I will not charm my tongue; I am bound to speak!” the climax of the play quite belongs to her. Her every iteration of the word “villainy” bespeaks a new realization about the wicked plot that has unfolded beneath her very nose. In these exchanges, Dugan hands both Othello and Iago some of their most forcefully convincing and compelling moments, exposing the failures of each with perfect dramatic authority. Garrett and Newell skillfully return her serve and reveal, with aplomb, the truth of their characters by allowing them to disintegrate, Iago into ineffectual cowardice; Othello into tragic despair. It’s thrilling.

Chris Critelli creates a capable and wonderfully sympathetic portrayal of ill-used Cassio. We can easily see how Othello might fear his striking and charming officer as a rival. Dan Walker is affecting as Desdemona’s discontented father.

Donna Massimo has provided an attractive and wonderfully romantic array of Mediterranean costumes, set against pleasing Moorish backgrounds. Steve Vaughan has, as always, staged marvelously entertaining and communicative fights.

Othello continues through August 19.

Nikki Renee Daniels stars in Artpark's "Aida"

AIDA

With only one musical in the lineup, they wanted to make a big splash at Artpark this summer. And so they decided to go over the top with Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida. The show will use a 28-member cast and a former Broadway Aida to tell the story of an enslaved Nubian princess who falls in love with her Egyptian captor, most famously recounted in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera.

MusicalFare’s artistic director, Randy Kramer, has directed the production and Lynne Kurdziel-Formato has returned to town to choreograph. Musical director Michael Hake calls the cast “the best musical ensemble” he has ever worked with.

“Aida is my favorite kind of show to choreograph,” says Kurdziel-Formato, who, even after relocating to North Carolina, where she serves on the faculty of Elon University, remains Western New York’s foremost musical theater choreographer. “It’s a show that needs to move and has a lot of visual elements to use and a wonderful pop-rock score.”

The show offers Kurdziel-Formato the chance to use her expansive choreographic vocabulary, running the gamut from African dance to martial arts movement. “So many of the transitions require movement, especially as the story shifts locations and culture,” she explains.

The constant movement was a concern to set designer Eric Appleton, who concedes that on a summer rehearsal schedule he was concerned to give the show a sense of enormity without overwhelming the 28 actors.

“It’s a big show,” agrees Appleton. “It jumps from place to place with short scenes. It’s got the largest set with largest budget I have ever done, and it has a relatively short rehearsal time. I knew I had to find a way to do this simply or we would end up with total confusion for the actors and the technicians.”

Appleton explains what he means.

“We start in a museum and then suddenly we are in ancient Nubia by the side of the Nile. Then we on board ship and then we are in Egypt. Then we are inside the palace. And all this happens while more than 20 actors are running off and on!

“I’ve used very traditional solutions to keep everything as technically simple as possible so we can have really fluid changes. What you will see is actually a traditional wing and drop set, large rather than detailed. Visually, we get just enough to suggest where we are. We will fly pieces in and push wagons in from the side. The story-telling must suggest the rest.”

Like Kurdziel-Formato, Appleton has enjoyed the visual vocabulary allowed by Aida.

“We associate Egypt with bleached stone out in the desert, but when we take antiquity as our contemporary setting we can restore its bright and colorful elements. We can see giant colorfully painted Egyptian pillars and an Egyptian barge with sails. We can see that amazing statuary and those impressive thrones! What you will see is bold, but not tricky. I kept telling myself, ‘Don’t confuse the actors!’”

Among those actors will be Nikki Renee Daniels, who most recently appeared in the Broadway revival of Les Miserables. In addition to Broadway performances in Nine, The Look of Love, Little Shop of Horrors and Lestat, Daniels also appeared in the original Broadway production of Aida, where she understudied the role of Aida. She is delighted have the opportunity to create the character for herself in a new production.

“When you are the understudy,” says Daniels, “you are expected to play the role exactly as the original star did, even duplicating the way she sang. At Artpark, it has been wonderful to create my own interpretation of Aida and to perform to the strengths of my own voice, which is very different from Heather Headley’s [the original Broadway Aida].”

When Daniels has not done understudy work, she has typically been cast as an ingénue. Often, she has played an ingénue while understudying the leading lady. This Aida is a welcome chance to be the star in a complex role.

“Usually I’m cast as the gentle ingénue. This woman has guts!”

Indeed, Aida is no ingénue. She is a dignified and courageous woman who projects royalty, even in a condition of slavery. Daniels is more than ready for the challenge.

For tickets and further information, see the Artpark Web site at artpark.net. Tickets can also be purchased at the Artpark box office (754-4375) or at tickets.com.