From the moment I walked into the Joan and Edgar Booth Theatre to see “Desdemona: a play about a handkerchief,” I knew I was in for an extremely niche specific experience.
“Desdemona,” written by Paula Vogel and originally staged in 1993, centers the stories of the three primary female characters in Shakespeare’s “Othello” and seeks to give them more voice and agency.
This production was presented by Boston University’s College of Fine Arts from April 16 to 19,directed by MFA candidate Grant Sorenson.
To be very straightforward, this play was simply not for me.
This production of “Desdemona” had definite high points, but in general, ranged from mildly confusing to bewildering.
One thing this production had in spades was its atmosphere. When the audience entered into the Booth Theatre, the scene and lighting design transported them into both the time period and the mood of the show.
Melancholy indie rock with piercing bass played in the house, and about 20 minutes before the official start time of the play, the show’s first character made her entrance.
Emilia, played by CFA senior Lana Breheney, entered through the same doors as the audience and wordlessly pushed three road crates onto the stage before pulling red sheets of fabric out of them.
As audience members filed into the theater, hydraulic lighting trusses above the stage lowered down for Emilia to hang the sheets around center stage.
Seeing an earlyattention to detail and engaging pre-show atmosphere made me expect a lot from the performance itself.
Emilia is later joined by the two other characters in the play: Desdemona, played by senior Arabella Benjamin, and Bianca, played by senior Alexandra Dagen.
Breheney’s performance was a standout, as she managed to elicit real sympathy from the audience and exhibit a wide range of emotion.
The play started strong, with a well-choreographed dance sequence which set up the story and the relationships between the cast members.
The costumes, designed by graduate student Angela Zhang, blended the “Riot grrrl” aesthetic of the 1990s with traditional silhouettes which could have been seen in the time period.
A major element of this blended aesthetic was the use of handheld microphones.
In moments of the play where a character needed to speak out or say something emotionally resonant to them, they would grab one of the three microphones placed on each side of the stage, further amplifying their voice.
This addition was striking, and in my opinion, added a lot of visual and sonic interest to the show.
However, the use of handheld microphones led into my least favorite element of the show.
This production includes three songs, one for each of the characters, which heavily confused me.
The titles or information about the songs are both nowhere in the play’s program and not easily searchable online, so I was unaware of the addition.
As a musical theater fan, I am not usually opposed to the usage of music in plays, but the songs in this production of “Desdemona” fell flat, both in their musical composition and in their performances.
Unfortunately, the songs added length to a show that already felt too long, even at its relatively short runtime of 90 minutes.
I also feel that Vogel’s material itself has critical issues, especially through the lens of its feminist ideals.
Basically all of the characters’ lines are about men or are speaking for the men in their lives, so while this play does theoretically give them more agency, it does not actually give them many opportunities to create personalities for themselves outside of men.
A major theme of this show was sex and sexuality, but unfortunately, a number of scenes that were probably supposed to represent sexual liberation mostly came across as comedic or silly.
A clear example of this was a scene in which Desdemona discovers “strapping” with the help of Bianca. This scene could have added depth to the characters’ relationship, but was instead full of overly exaggerated moans and thrashing.
In the end, “Desdemona” struggles as a play with an unclear vision, making its productions even more confusing.
CFA’s production of “Desdemona” had many bright spots within individual departments — there was stellar lighting, beautiful scenic, costume and sound design, creating beautiful visual moments — but it struggled as a unified play.
The production set my hopes very high, but did not meet my expectations.
