Something Thoughtful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.

OTHELLO IN PORTUGUESE

Forgive me, patient reader, but I am once again going to unload a traveller’s tale upon you. Back in January, enjoying three weeks in Portugal, we spent most of our time staying with friends in Peniche an hour or so north of Lisbon, but we de-camped to Lisbon itself for a number of nights, took many day-trips to other towns, and spent much of one week up north in the university town Coimbra and the better-known city Porto – or “Oporto” as a few English-speakers still miscall it.

In two-and-a-half days in Porto we did what all tourists do. We took in many elaborate baroque churches. We visited a spectacular ossuary in a crypt. We lingered near the misty Douro River, admired its bridges and remembered the engineering genius of Gustave Eiffel who designed some of those bridges before he built his tower in Paris.

And of course we sought out the drink that takes its name from this city. Crossing Eiffel’s famous Dom Luis I Bridge, we walked into the cellars of the Burmester Port Company and enjoyed a guided tour – for just the two of us – conducted by Pablo, a genial young Spaniard [sic], who explained the whole process of blending and maturing port, allowed us to sip a few free samples, and easily induced us to buy a couple of bottles of the best. (Calm down, now – I know all such tours are a species of advertisement; we are not naïve when we travel; but we intended to buy some fine port anyway.)

So far, so predictable, if you’re making a brief visit to Porto.

But in Porto we also found the unexpected.

We are not lounge lizards or habitues of night-clubs or bars. If we are being tourists, the entertainment we seek in the evening is opera, jazz or live theatre. And there in Porto we saw advertised, at its local branch of Portugal’s National Theatre, a production of Shakespeare’s Otelo [sic] in Portuguese, but with English surtitles. It was directed by Nuno Carinhas, who has a track-record in producing Portuguese versions of European classics (Shakespeare, Moliere, Beckett, Brian Friel etc.).

Three years ago on this blog, in a wordy critique of Orson Welles’ film Othello called Put Money in Thy Purse Before Thou Startest Filming, I explained why it was that Othello is one of the seven or eight plays by Shakespeare that I know best. I wrote a study guide on it, have seen it performed in many different productions (both live and filmed) and have read what many critics have had to say about it. And so I thought it would be intriguing to see the play performed in another language.

In we went to the gallery of a medium-sized 19^th century-style theatre.

The production was in modern dress. It had a total cast of ten and was performed on a minimalist set, occasionally with slightly fussy staging to accommodate the fact that there was much “doubling” by the actors in smaller supporting roles. The minimalist set meant that Desdemona was eventually smothered near floor level rather than on a curtained bed. Not that this worried me too much. The simplest of sets are more in keeping with what Shakespeare had in mind than anything more elaborate. The force of his plays is in language and motion, not in set-design.

Nearly every production of a Shakespeare play will cut some of the text. This was to be expected. But [following Shakespeare’s words in the surtitles], I found some of the cuts regrettable. Most of Othello’s speech when Iago first twists his mind was missing (“Farewell the tranquil mind… Farewell the plumed troops, and the big wars, / That makes ambition, virtue!” etc.). As far as the characterisation of the flawed tragic hero is concerned, this is a bit like cutting “To be or not to be” out of Hamlet. It was also a pity that Emilia’s commonsensical questions about Desdemona’s supposed adultery were cut (“What place, what time, what form, what likelihood?”) – for these are question that, if answered, would cut the ground from under Iago’s schemes. Saddest of all, though, was that Othello never got to ask, of Iago, the crucial question “why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body” – the question that Iago cannot and will not answer, as it exposes his essential nihilism.

But most challenging of all was the fact that Othello was played as (and by) a white European – not as a North African Moor nor yet as an equatorial African. I understand the modern sensitivities here. Othello can easily be (mis)interpreted as a play presenting an African (or Moorish) man as credulous and “primitive”. Have the role played by a white man in blackface (as was most often the case since the play was written) and the problem is compounded by racial stereotype. Yet the fact remains that much of the taunting of Iago and Roderigo (behind Othello’s back) is based on what we would now call racism – taunts like “the thick lips”, comparisons with animals and so on. I would go so far as to say that the play implicitly condemns racism by putting such taunts in the mouths of men who are clearly villainous (Iago) or pathetically gullible (Roderigo). So in this Portuguese production, with Othello a white man among others whites, a major part of what the play is about was missing.

All of which makes it sound as if I am condemning this production in the Porto branch of Portugal’s National theatre.

Not a bit of it.

The play was performed robustly and passionately with (probably engaging in a racial stereotype of my own) much Latin heat, especially in the scene where Othello falls down into a writhing fit. Of course we were following the surtitles, but we were also listening intently to the voices of the Portuguese actors – the oratorical sonority of Othello in the earlier scenes and his manic rage in later ones. The sinuous innuendo of Iago and his frank cynicism in his soliloquies (of which he has more than Othello does in the first half of the play). Desdemona’s bewilderment, Emilia’s no-nonsense arguments, Cassio’s hurt pride, Roderigo’s whining sense of grievance – it was all there in the sound of the voices, even if the language was alien to us. And the action was vigorous and swift, as it should be.

Most impressive of all was the rapt attention of the audience. Doubtless there were a few other Anglophone tourists like us in the crowd, but most were clearly Portuguese, following and listening intently to every moment of it, and applauding vigorously at the end of each half – a contingent of teenagers among them. I have seen very good non-English-language film versions of Shakespeare’s plays (excellent Soviet-era Russian films of Hamlet and King Lear; not to mention Akira Kurosawa’s Japanese adaptation of Macbeth as Throne of Blood). But I had never seen a non-English-language live performance of Shakespeare before this production in Porto.

I know the effect was, as it always is in drama, as much the impression made by the players as by the text of the play itself. Even so, watching Otelo [sic] in Porto was a great demonstration of Shakespeare’s international appeal.

And we applauded lustily too.