TV Reviews : An Uneven ‘Othello’ From South Africa

Bravo’s second “Texaco Performing Arts Showcase” (at 7:30 p.m. Sunday) is a spicy “Othello” from Johannesburg’s Market Theatre, a landmark company that single-handedly has been defying apartheid for years.

It is staged by that splendid London-based South African actress Janet Suzman, with John Kani in the title role. It is also, however, 3 1/2 hours long, uneven, and would have benefited from some judicious trimming in its early expository scenes.

While Kani’s approach to his first Shakespearean role is refreshingly direct and unencumbered by tradition, he’s not ideal casting for Othello. A man of smallish build, Kani (seen in “The Island” and “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” at the Taper in 1975) doesn’t comfortably inhabit the trappings of power and only reaches the requisite emotional heights in the bedchamber scenes with Desdemona (a delicately eloquent Joanna Weinberg, whose tremulous performance ranks with the best).

The production also benefits from Neil McCarthy’s virile Cassio and especially Dorothy Gould’s Emilia. Her intensity and vociferous outrage occasionally sail over the top, but they lend real anguish to the play’s closing moments.

This “Othello’s” most significant disappointment is its Iago. Richard Haddon Haines is all text and no surprises, an egregious, exhausting villain, who thinks nothing of rolling his eyes and smacking his lips. The balance of the company is stage-worthy, if undistinguished.

Suzman’s work, however, what we can see of it, is fascinating. She proves as vibrant and inventive a director as she is an actress, rarely creating uninteresting exchanges, even when she cannot overcome the casting choices, the photographic murkiness or the excess of tight close-ups. Because the biggest problem with this “Othello” turns out to be the claustrophobic taping. It dates to 1987, looks crudely lifted off the stage and is too often dark or visually unexciting, which, at this length, taxes endurance.

Too bad, because patience is ultimately rewarded. The last hour or so of the production is unquestionably its finest, even if getting to it isn’t easy. Such mixed results leave one torn between welcoming the opportunity to see the work of the Market in such an unconventional if flawed staging and wishing that it had been much better served by the technology.