[Festwochen.]

Desdemona was written by Toni Morrison, directed by Peter Sellars, with music by Rokia Traoré and starring Elizabeth Marvel.

Plot:
Desdemona is a feminist reworking of Shakespeare‘s Othello: Desdemona (Elizabeth Marvel) remembers her life from her grave. She tells her story to her African nurse Barbary (Rokia Traoré), who answers her with songs about liberation, freedom and love.

Desdemona starts off well but then kind of peters out (probably at the same rate the oxygen left the room, so it might not be entirely the play’s fault). It’s a professional, very well-made production. It just didn’t speak to me at all. Though I did like the music.

The whole production is interesting and as I said before, very well made – the stage and costume design is completely minimalistic – but more wasn’t necessary anyway. The lightning makes for a bit of variety and that’s enough.

Elizabeth Marvel was wonderful. She’s mesmerizing when she performs, has an amazing presence on stage. I think it’s mostly her voice, which is sexy as hell and with which she has a lot of range: She speaks Othello, too, and her voice gets very deep when she does.

Rokia Traoré’s music is very evocative and her lyrics are wonderful – I was very grateful that they gave us a translation for them.

The thing was, despite all those good things, it didn’t work for me – and that’s mostly due to Toni Morrison. Her text feels convoluted and goes off on tangents and I just really didn’t like Desdemona. She was rambling and I didn’t care about her at all. I never found an entry.

Summarising: Wasn’t my cup of tea, but it was a good play.