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DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 3, No. 7 |
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'OTHELLO'  Eamonn Walker (left) plays Police Commissioner Othello; he's ill-served by Officer Ben Jago (Christopher Eccleston). |
This modern-day 'Othello'
needs rewrite by the Bard
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of TheColumnists.com
Shakespeare knew what pushed our buttons–-sex
and power and scheming and backstabbing and the good dying all
too young. The staples of daytime soaps.
Racial issues too–treated tragically in the Bard’s eternally eerie play of interracial love, marriage, betrayal and murder, “Othello.”
Four centuries after Shakespeare penned “Othello,” “Masterpiece Theatre” has decided it’s time for a TV update, a two-hour telefilm set in contemporary London and retooled as a gritty police drama, premiering January 28 on your local PBS station.
If only the Bard had done television. This edgy new “Othello” is an eye-grabber, fast-paced and packed with bold performances. Yet it suffers from a flaw of Shakespearean proportion. Its dialogue–a contempo translation of Willie’s convoluted Elizabethan English--is so dumbed-down it could have been written by a grade-schooler.
It wasn’t.
Celebrated UK screenwriter Andrew Davies (“House of Cards,” “Middlemarch,” “Moll Flanders”) did the dubious honors for this co-production of London Weekend Television and Boston’s WGBH-TV, in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
In Shakespeare’s classic play Othello is a respected Moorish general in the service of warring Venice. Davies’ “Othello” stars Eamonn Walker (“Oz”) as John Othello, newly appointed commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police. A black man, Othello is promoted as a political gesture after race riots rip London apart. The triggering incident is based on the 1993 killing of a black teenager in London, dramatized on “Masterpiece Theatre” as “The Murder of Stephen Lawrence” on January 21.
As it happens Othello takes the top job that white copper Ben Jago (Christopher Eccleston) craved and still covets. Jago–Davies’ version of Shakespeare’s duplicitous character Iago--sets out to topple Othello by simultaneously befriending and undermining him in his personal and professional life.
Othello is married to a gorgeous white woman--Desdemona in the play, Dessie (Keeley Hawes) in the “Masterpiece” movie. In the beginning Othello and Dessie seem almost blissfully oblivious to their contrasting colors. But Jago decides to change all that, aiming straight at Othello’s hidden weaknesses–his insecurity and abiding racial mistrust.
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is jealous when he thinks wife Dessie (Keeley Hawes) is cheating on him. |
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The instrument of Othello’s downfall–and fall he does–is Michael Cass (Richard Coyle), a cocky young officer who becomes Dessie’s personal bodyguard after Jago sets up a series of fake racist threats against her.
Encouraged by Jago, Cass courts Dessie. She virtuously resists him but Othello smells disloyalty nonetheless. In one clunky scene Jago eggs Othello into jealousy–it isn’t hard--by alluding to Cass’s sexy “swordsmanship.”
Much use is made of tight close-ups, as Jago seemingly soothes Othello’s worried soul while not-so-surreptiously planting doubt of Dessie deep in his heart.
Othello to Jago: “It scares me Ben–all this feeling. I don’t know if I could bear losing her.”
Jago: “Are you jealous?”
Othello: “Should I be?”
Jago: “Hey, who knows? Maybe all this is just in your head.”
You gotta wonder how a purportedly smart guy like Othello could fall for such a stupid ploy.
Davies also turns the magical handkerchief Othello gives Desdemona in the play into a gold brocade robe–flashier for the visual medium of television. It’s the robe Othello wears when making love to Dessie–a garment Cass dons one day before Othello comes home, driving him to madness.
His descent is almost too painful to watch. Walker is a fine actor who can’t overcome Davies’ unsubtle script. His emotions seem too juvenile by far.
And Jago–he’s way too arch.
Davies has Eccleston’s Jago doing silly to-the-camera monologues that smack of snakey Francis Urquhart’s signature scenes in the “House of Cards” trilogy.
“Well, well–what a passionate performance,” Jago says of his all-too-easy schemes. “I’m quite surprised at myself….It’s all gonna end in broken hearts. Not yours though or mine. (A beat). Do you like sex?”
Of course we do. We like it better with more tease and smarts behind it. And in fact we see very little of it in public TV’s “Othello.”
Be forewarned that you won’t learn much Shakespeare from this surface-slick effort.
Still Davies does a good job of touching on the persistent, pervasive corrosiveness of racial fear.
But no matter how you cut it, Davies’ dull dialogue does not serve Shakespeare well. (Plus, this can’t really be how cops speak.) His approach is puzzling, given the intelligence and complexity of “Othello’s” characters and the movie’s capable cast. His writing weakens an otherwise strong show, making “Masterpiece” an obvious misnomer.
Then again, if Shakespeare
were alive today, he might well indulge in the same sort of facile
tricks. After all he was a crowd-pleaser who could write high
or low, playing to the scruffy blokes in the pit. If he were
alive today he’d have a contract with Fox or the WB, creating
the likes of “24” or “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
As it is, he’s probably watching public TV’s “Othello”
from on high--or wherever--bemoaning its lackluster language
while cheering its cheeky Brit grit.
© 2002 by Kinney Littlefield. The Littlefield caricature
is © 2001 by Jim Hummel. The photos are © by Granada
Television and are used by permission of WGBH Boston.
You
can comment on this column or contact Kinney Littlefield with
an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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