Founding member and director Tony Simotes of Shakespeare & Company draws some fascinating parallels between the story of their current production, Othello, and the situation in present-day America. Othello, a Moorish mercenary who is chosen to lead the navy of Venice in a war against the Ottoman empire, could be compared to Barack Obama in that, despite lingering strains of racism, he may be the best man for the job of pulling a country out of a situation that makes its future look bleaker and bleaker. On the stage of contemporary global politics, as in the play, complications may arise, not on the actual battlefield but behind the closed doors of the aristocracy.
In the Shakespeare play, Othello’s officer Iago, perhaps acting on behalf of the will of many of the people, immediately begins working to sabotage the leader’s scandalous interracial marriage to Desdemona, a cherished daughter of the Venetian nobility. Sowing doubts about Desdemona’s fidelity, Iago and his compatriots tear down the new and fragile regime from within, a process that leaves one wondering if any stability, fictional or real-world, is possible in the absence of some sort of collective conscience. Poignant and metaphorically topical, Shakespeare & Company’s production reignites smoldering questions that perhaps we should try to answer within our own society before shuffling off to the polls in November.
July 18-Aug. 31, $15-60, 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., Founders’ Theatre, 70 Kemble St., Lenox, (413) 637-1199, www.shakespeare.com.
Paint It Black
