Summary 
Modernized to 1870s Venice with emphasis on the Moor as a doomed outsider rather than a tragically jealous victim. Strong use of onstage African music, dancing, and sound effects. Othello is a subdued old man subsisting in a regal, aristocratic, and racist society. A melancholy rather than tragic conclusion.
Design
Directed by Barbara Gaines. Set by Donald Eastman. Costumes by Nan Cibula-Jenkins. Lights by Frances Aronson. Sound by Robert Neuhaus. Original music by Lloyd Brodnax King.
Cast
Paul Butler (Othello), Kyle Colerider-Krugh (Roderigo), Steve Pickering (Iago), Greg Vinkler (Brabantio/Gratiano), Ian Barford (Cassio), Terrence Green (Duke/Lodovico), Deborah Staples (Desdemona), Dominic Fumusa (Montano), Lisa Dodson (Emilia), Magica Bottari (Bianca).
Analysis
Director Barbara Gaines focuses her production of Othello on the title character. She eschews the usual focus of Iago's villainy or the evils of jealousy and instead stresses the emotional burden of Othello's status as an exotic and reviled stranger. Gaines envisions the Moor as a middle-aged, dark-skinned outsider, emotionally detached from his culture and from himself. The production opens with the string overture from Verdi's nineteenth century Otelo, but as Othello enters upstage, an ethereal Moorish melody replaces the overture. The change presents a contrast of cultures, with imperialist 1870s Italy pitted against the then unknown African continent.
Paul Butler portrays Othello, and as the production begins he exhibits confidence and contentment while clothed in his native African robes. Two similarly clad women accompany Othello, dancing around him with graceful abandon. A percussionist joins the dancers, and the trio play musical instruments throughout the production from an offstage but visible orchestra pit. The musicians perform with flute and drums as well as with a steel pipe, reeds, and a gong. The musical score sounds regal and sophisticated at times and tribal and primitive at others. The musicians also create an abundance of instrumental and oral sound effects that range from timpanic drumming and joyous bursts of woodwind to grunts, groans, hums and sighs. A stick filled with millet (a "rain tree") overturns to simulate the sound of rainfall, and a finger circles the rim of a brandy snifter to create an eerily high-pitched hum during the suffocation scene. The music and sound effects never intrude upon the action, deftly serving as reminders of Othello's misplaced heritage.
Significantly, the musicians at times express, with sounds, the emotions of Othello himself. Butler portrays the Moor as a subdued and soft-spoken old man rather than as a dashing and confident military figure. A stranger from a communal culture, this Othello emotionally subsists within an individualistic and racist society. He lives separated from the reality of his true emotions, which are conveyed externally by the musicians and dancers.
A "memory light" dramatizes Othello's disconnection from, and longing for, his African roots. In 2.2, Othello, already emotionally isolated, physically separates himself from the celebrating Venetians to witness a jubilant African dance performed downstage within golden light. Later, Gaines visually depicts the Moor's fond remembrance of his mother: while Othello recounts the tale, the woman appears in emerald light and presents him with the handkerchief embroidered with strawberries. The cloth therefore represents Othello's connection to his homeland as well as his love for Desdemona. In 3.4, Gaines shows the "loss" of the handkerchief - and connections - to be the Moor's own doing: Othello seizes the cloth from Desdemona and tosses it away, unwittingly symbolizing his self exile.
Gaines establishes the theme of Othello's distance from Venetian society with the Moor's initial appearance. Arms upraised, Othello stands in his African robes at the edge of a stark - and unchanging - set of meshed metal. A sudden burst of flame, as large as Othello himself, ignites from the stage floor, but disappears just as suddenly as the stage goes dark. In a cinematic matching cut, a single match is struck in the darkness. As the lights come up, Iago lights a cigar with the burning match at center stage. Iago's slight flame is pale in comparison to Othello's brilliant flash; the figurative fire defines the clash of cultures.
Iago lounges with Roderigo in wingback leather chairs within a posh Victorian mens' club, cooled by ceiling fans as they smoke cigars and sip brandy. Their aristocratic manner makes the racism of their words all the more repellent. The bigotry erupts from them with blunt offhandedness, their elitist hatred at the core of a supposedly cultured society. Brabantio sleeps in a chair across from them, still wearing his reading glasses. When Iago rouses Brabantio, figuratively and literally, he walks downstage to snatch the older man's glasses, and his theft seems less a prank than a demonstration of Brabantio's racist myopia.
The Venetian costumes consist of late 19th century fashion, from militaristic dark blue uniforms on the soldiers to the white-wigged rigidity of the red-robed senators. The Venetian women wear lovely but severely corseted gowns that contrast with the loose fitting veils and silks of the African dancers. Similarly, when the Venetians celebrate on Cyprus with a masquerade ball, they dance with strictly choreographed precision to a minuet. The Venetians appear stiff and uncomfortable in comparison with the lithe African dancers. Gaines pointedly sets the production in the late 1870s, an era that included the European conquest of the African continent.
Apart from Desdemona, the military provides Butler's Othello with his only genuine connection to Venetian culture. Gaines demonstrates the bond between soldiers with frequent displays of back-slapping camaraderie. Othello's trust of Iago seems natural within this brotherly context, but Othello's cultural disconnection is the production's thematic thrust, and the somber Butler portrays the dislocated Moor as enervated and self-loathing. Brabantio's hysterics during 1.2 contrast with Othello's sluggish response, but also upstage him, and Iago supposedly supports the role of Othello but Iago dominates scene after scene, and therefore the production.
Iago resembles a raving Mussolini: he clutches his bald head like a madman, laughs like a lunatic, and plots like a fiend. He rivets the audience with displays of unbridled hatred as he mimics Othello's baritone, affects Cassio's lisp, and mocks Emilia's laughter. This Iago firmly believes Othello has bedded his wife, imbuing him both with a primary motive for revenge and a reason for his own self-hatred. His interaction with Emilia is brutal: he rejects her embrace on Cyprus by turning away, and after he shuns her attempt at seduction in the handkerchief scene, he licks her face like a snake in triumph once he has taken the cloth from her. The manic and dynamic Iago, although undeniably entertaining, ironically weakens Gaines' dramatic focus on an alienated Othello.
Iago behaves without fear, but more from self-loathing than from bravery. When Roderigo threatens him with a knife, Iago grasps Roderigo's wavering hand and holds the blade firmly at his own throat with a chilling lack of concern. At the finale, Gratiano threatens him with torture, but the disinterested Iago responds only with an offhand guffaw.
Gaines visually supports the link of violence between Iago and Othello. Each man exists consumed in a self-loathing that manifests itself in domestic violence: both wrongly accuse and abuse - and ultimately murder - their wives. Each husband, in separate scenes, roughly throws his spouse to the floor in the same manner at center stage. Further, when Othello kneels and vows to kill Desdemona, he holds a sheathed sword in front of him with both hands. Iago crouches behind him, then reaches to grasp the sword himself, visually and symbolically connecting the two men. Drums pound as the lights fade for intermission.
The 5.2 conclusion illustrates this production's troublesome conflict between concept and execution. A wronged and valiant Desdemona struggles mightily but fails, and Emilia finally emancipates herself, although tragically late. Both women pointedly die elevated upon the bed. Significantly, the dying Othello collapses before he can kiss Desdemona, and the Moor dies beneath the two women on the floor. His mother reappears as the deathbed slides backward offstage. Once the Venetians are gone, she kneels alone beside her son and ritualistically covers his dead body as the play concludes. This ending, with Othello isolated in death - as he was in life away from Africa - creates a mood of subdued melancholy. The notion nags, however, that the conclusion would have been far more tragic and powerful with a less restrained Othello.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.14, No.2, Spring 1996.