The Raul Julia–Christopher Walken “Othello” in Central Park—the eighteenth production in Joe Papp’s ongoing Shakespeare marathon—is every bit as good as everyone said it was going to be (the advance word was very strong), and among the best Shakespeare productions I’ve seen at the Delacorte. Directed by Joe Dowling (late of the Abbey Theater), it boasts a rapturous Emilia from Mary Beth Hurt; a delightful Bianca from Miriam Healy-Louie (the spirited young actress who played Juliet in the last production at Theater for a New Audience); a charming Roderigo from Jake Weber; and an honorable Cassio from Michael Gill. All this, of course, is in addition to Mr. Walken’s Iago—a part he delivers so easily and laconically that you want to take away his body mike and make him do the thing unamplified, because you know he could.
What’s heartening about watching Walken play Shakespeare (provided he’s allowed to play what’s written, which wasn’t the case in Steven Berkoff’s “Coriolanus”) is that he manages to do something we’ve learned to think is impossible: find a modern idiom that is at once American and contemporary, but that doesn’t betray the rhythm of the text. Put a Pacino or a Martin Sheen in a Shakespeare play and you will get Pacino or Martin Sheen; you won’t get a union between the actor’s particular style and the dramatic vocabulary Shakespeare used. Even the melodious-voiced Mr. Julia can do only one thing at a time: either speak the poetry or play a character. Thus, if you go to see the production in the Park you’ll find that he delivers the “Her father lov’d me, oft invited me” speech beautifully but without giving you any sense of the man who charmed Desdemona and is now trying to charm her father and the Venetian senators. He’s just a guy performing a speech. Mr. Walken, rare among American actors—and movie actors in general, for that matter—has the ability to be a stylist and the playwright’s creation at the same time.
I saw “Othello” on the hottest night of the year—a Friday toward the end of June when the temperature climbed to ninety-six. That actors could perform, let alone perform creditably, in such heat (and under stage lights) was beyond me, and all the more when I saw the impossibly heavy, dark costumes Jane Greenwood had designed for a summer production. If George Morfogen’s Brabantio seemed slightly less focused than Frank Raiter’s Duke of Venice, and if the members of the senate sounded at times like something out of a “Beyond the Fringe” parody, it didn’t seem polite to notice. I couldn’t believe the energy with which the men in the cast undertook David Leong’s exciting fight sequences (perhaps too exciting: Mr. Gill was wearing a gauze eye patch that evening). And if Kathryn Meisle, who plays Desdemona and has to wear some very unfortunate gowns, failed to create the kind of life around the character that Miss Hurt did around Emilia, it may have been the heat. As for Miss Hurt, she had perhaps the heaviest, hottest costume of all and gave a beautiful performance, but then she is less human than divine.
Mimi Kramer
The New Yorker, July 15, 1991