Othello (18 Nov 1964)

 Some more Shakespeare. This was 1964's effort.

Premise

You know it.

Cast

• Raymond Westwell as Othello
• Keith Lee as Iago
• Frances McDonald as Desdemona
• Joan MacArthur as Emilia
• Judith Arthy as Bianca
• John Gregg as Cassio
• Terry Norris as Rodrigo
• Leslie Wright as Montano
• Carl Bleazby as Lodovico
• Kenric Hudson as Brabantino
  
• Don Crosby as Duke of Vince
• Douglas Kelly as Gratiano
  

Original play

Accepted as a classic. Often performed in Australia.  A listing of some Oz performances is here.

The Elizabethen Theatre Trust did it in 1961 with John Alden. They also produced a 1964 New Theatre version.

Other version

It was adapted for Canadian TV in 1963.

BBC TV filmed it in 1937, 1950, 1955.  It was done a number of times for BBC radio.

Production

It was one of the most ambitious projects made in Melbourne going for over two hours without a break. Patrick Barton directed.

Raymond Westwell and David Bradley did the adaptation. Westwell played the title role.  Patrick Barton directed.

Raymond Westwell had played generals on Australian TV in The Angry General and Romanoff and Juliet as well as on stage in Ross. "But Othello the Moor is perhaps the stage's greatest general and a part I have been conceited enough to want to have a go at for years," said Westwell.

The actor had appeared in various productions of the play overseas - and toured in it in Australia in 1953 with Tony Quayle and Leo McKern, see here - but this was the first time he had played the title character. 

He had seen Laurence Oliver, Anthony Quayle and Paul Robeson play the part. "There are a thousand ways of doing this play and many arguments for and against Othello being portrayed either as a Negro or an Arab," said Westwell. "Sir Laurence Olivier played him as a negro and won tremendous acclaim last year. However Patrick Barton and I feel that Shakespeare intended him to be an Arab."

Joan MacArthur, Westwell's wife, had played Emilia opposite Anthony Quayle on stage and in 1962 said it was her favourite role.

Frances McDonald made her TV debut.

Keith Clarke did the costumes. Trevor Linge did the design.

Reception

The Sydney Morning Herald said "the emotional trivialities of the minor characters were excellently handled" but felt Othello was "rather too much an English country gentleman" and Keith Lee played his part "as a man believing in nothing apart from himself."

The Canberra Times said it "must stand along with William Sterling’s  A Man For All Seasons, last year, as the most entertaining and moving drama production from the Melbourne studios. It also ranks as one of the most successful television adaptations of Shakespeare attempted in Australia. For once, praise he. the producer, Patrick Barton, was given room to move — in both time and space.”"

The Age TV Guide 12 Nov 1964

Canberra Times 5 Feb 1965 p 13

The Age TV Guide 12 Nov 1964 p 3

SMH 4 Feb 1965 p 9

SMH TV Guide 1 Feb 1965

Forgotten Australian TV Plays: Othello and Volpone
January 20, 2022
Stephen Vagg’s series on forgotten Australian TV plays gets a bit STC/MTC-season-subscriber, looking at two different adaptations of Elizabethan classics: Othello (1964) and Volpone (1968).
Warning: this article contains racist imagery.

The ABC’s traditional attitude towards “good theatre” on television was summed up by its then-head of drama Neil Hutchison in 1963 at his appearance in front of the Senate Select Committee on the Encouragement of Australian Productions for Television. During his testimony, Hutchison took time out from criticising the quality of Australian acting, directing, and writing, with a sideswipe at Whiplash! thrown in for good measure, to talk about the importance of classics on television. He said “it must be borne in mind that the great works of classical literature should never be excluded from our programmes. There should always be [a] certain amount of Shakespeare, for instance, and the great recognised playwrights of antiquity, in the English language particularly, as our own schools study Shakespeare. It is essential that Shakespeare should be seen on television because in remote areas the likelihood of securing full scale stage productions is remote.”

Hutchison didn’t explain why the ABC had to produce local television versions of the classics when it could simply show BBC ones, but anyway, that was the attitude of the time, and today I’d like to discuss two famous plays filmed by the ABC: Othello and Volpone.

Othello

Othello was the ABC’s annual Shakespeare television production for 1964 (although it did not air in Sydney until the following year). Unlike some of their earlier productions like, say, Antony and Cleopatra and Richard II there was no doubting Othello’s place in the Shakespeare canon – it’s always listed among the Bard’s masterworks and Othello and Iago are two of the greatest parts in theatre.

I’m guessing you all know the plot, right? For those who need a quick summary, the elevator pitch is this: Othello is a black army general married to white Desdemona, who has his mind poisoned with jealousy by Othello’s frenemy Iago. There’s more to it than that – the full text is here – but that’s the gist. It involves a LOT of toxic masculinity.

The play is a capital “C” Classic – I think there’s a law in western theatre that it has to be produced somewhere in the world at every given moment – and accordingly had been performed on stage countless times in Australia, including a turn by John Alden at the Elizabethan Theatre Trust. The BBC had done TV adaptations in 1937 (with Ralph Richardson in the title role), 1950 and 1955.

The ABC version was shot in Melbourne and went for over two hours. The title role was played by Raymond Westwell, a super experienced theatre actor who portrayed the part in blackface, which was, unfortunately, still accepted at the time as a way to do it: Laurence Olivier had just used this method at the National Theatre in London. It didn’t have to be that way: in the 1955 BBC television production, for instance, an actual black actor, Gordon Heath, had played Othello. And there were professional black actors in Australia – Joe Jenkins had starred in The Emperor Jones for the ABC in 1960, Robert Tudawali had done Burst of Summer. But the ABC decided to go with Westwell and boot polish (blackface in Australian drama didn’t die off until the uproar over James Laurenson’s casting in Boney in 1971… it lingered on in Australian comedy for another forty years.)

Westwell (who did the adaptation along with David Bradley) had played generals in the Australian TV plays The Angry General and Romanoff and Juliet as well as on stage in a production of Terence Rattigan’s Ross. “But Othello the Moor is perhaps the stage’s greatest general and a part I have been conceited enough to want to have a go at for years,” Westwell told the TV Times. The actor had appeared in various productions of the play overseas – and toured with it in Australia in 1953 with Tony Quayle and Leo McKern – but this was the first time he had played the title character.  Westwell and Barton decided to play Othello as an Arab rather than as a black man, but there is still an awful lot of make up on the actor’s face.

Joan MacArthur, Westwell’s wife, appeared in the play as Emilia – which she had played opposite Anthony Quayle on stage. Other key roles are played by Keith Eden (Iago), Frances McDonald (Desdemona), Judith Arthy (Bianca), John Gregg (Cassio) and Terry Norris (Rodrigo). Keith Eden is particularly excellent.

The production is very well directed by Patrick Barton – I think it’s one of his best efforts behind the camera and the lighting is superb. Reviews were deservedly strong. It’s one of the ABC’s best Shakespeare productions, though the blackface is unsettling. One just wishes that if the ABC wanted to do an Australian Othello that they did a, well, Australian Othello – cast a POC actor and/or adapt it to Australia...