Tragic Handkerchief

On the tiny stage of a straw-hat theater in Cambridge, Mass, last week Paul Robeson made his first U.S. appearance in Othello. After seeing him, scholars might still insist that Shakespeare meant Othello for a Moor and not a Negro. But drama lovers well might ask why, having played it twelve years ago in London, Robeson waited so long to play it over here. For in spite of muffing certain speeches--his lines sometimes throbbed awkwardly--and overacting certain scenes--his Grand Manner sometimes burst a seam--Robeson gave a performance that even at its worst was vivid and that at its best was shattering.

Robeson's great voice, stature, bearing were physically impressive. He gave a plausible impression of being just such a towering man as was Othello himself. More important, Robeson conveyed the bigness of Othello's nature--its warmth, poetry (nobody in Shakespeare utters lordlier speech), simplicity, trustingness: the clawing horror which seizes Othello when lago dupes him into thinking himself a cuckold could come only from an utterly unjealous nature.

Robeson caught, too, much of the final Othello who stifles Desdemona' not savagely from hate, but solemnly for honor. Earlier, however, when Othello's tortured soul is seared with rage, Robeson unwisely tried to reproduce Othello's violence--which on the stage becomes grotesque--instead of finding a way to suggest it.

No scratch production, Othello had the shrewd, story-must-come-first direction that Margaret Webster also gave to the Maurice Evans Hamlet and Macbeth.

All the same, Robeson's towering personality unbalanced the play by dwarfing lago. Most absolute of villains, who hates goodness, craves power, thrives on destruction, lago--as somebody has said--is the plot, since he engineers every last detail of it, unloosing all hell with a dropped handkerchief. A great lago can usually steal the show. As a pretty good lago, Jose Ferrer (Key Largo, Charley's Aunt) could not, against Robeson, even hold his own. The result was unorthodox: an Othello that had emotional grandeur, but lacked psychological excitement.

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