Black like him? 'Red Velvet' probes what's real when the curtain drew back in Victorian England

Ira Aldridge, subject to the theater world's scrutiny

Gradually it's become clear that the most consequential kind of politics is identity politics, especially in
the arts. Thinking about who strives to attain or hold on to power in the various arenas of life and how they wield it brings us more and more to the problem of how people choose to identify themselves and how they are identified by others. The discrepancy is huge. T'he arts may well be universal, but they have to address the universe through particular doors. 

In Indianapolis theater recently, we've had two striking examples: "Gender Play" at the Phoenix Theatre, thanks to broad thinking by Indy Shakes, and — as of Thursday night — "Red Velvet" in a Southbank Theatre Company production in Butler University's Shelton Auditorium. Both plays muse considerably on the nature of theater itself as their protagonists project to the world their struggles. 

In "Red Velvet," that takes the form of an African-American actor who becomes the first of his race to play Shakespeare's Othello in London. The time shortly before Queen Victoria's ascension to the English throne (1837) was marked by tumult that took a while to settle into measured reform. It seemed to do so only as the young queen proved able to reign with a steady hand over her subjects until the dawn of the 20th century, giving her name permanently to an era.

"Red Velvet" paints the background selectively, emphasizing the controversy over the African slave trade and Parliament's decision to end it in 1833. In backstage discussion of the movement toward abolition, one actor, Bernard Ward, jousts with another, Henry Forester. As Ward, the estimable Southbank veteran Doug Powers argues for a hierarchical society supporting racial privilege, down to the availability of cheap sugar for his tea. 

The more pragmatic, even humane, view of Forrester, charmingly played by J. Charles Weimer, is that the times merit an end to the costly, immoral distraction of slave marketing. In the arts, imminent social change just might mean an actor of color stepping into the title role of "Othello" in place of an esteemed white actor in blackface. But not so fast, declares Charles Kean, son of the company's indisposed "Othello" star, Edmund Kean, who in fact would die later in the spring. 

Daniel Wilke plays Aldridge with a pronounced sense of aggrievement, especially in the first of the play's frame scenes as Act 1 gets off to a roaring start. Learning of some technical troubles later, I now understand why the scene of Aldridge on tour on the Continent many years after his battle for acceptance as Othello in London seemed to hang loose, without context. Captions failed to materialize Thursday night, and are presumably to be in place from now on.  Some lighting fixes may also lend more clarity.

Lolita Chakrabarti's play rockets forward from this opening directly into the slave-trade fray roiling English society. Quickly the racism that permitted the slave trade's defense as something that upheld the English way of life, at least on its upper strata, is shown flexing its muscles in the theatrical world. Leading the charge is Charles, played in consistent foaming-at-the-mouth mode by Matt Hartzburg,

Lengthy confrontation: Aldridge and LaPorte

It's one of the portrayals in which director Donna McFadden ought to have encouraged a little more variety and restraint. The most trying example of that lack of restraint came in a long confrontation between Aldridge and Pierre LaPorte, the French manager of the Covent Garden company who has enabled the black  actor's lucky break by casting him as Shakespeare's "moor of Venice" for the rest of the run.

LaPorte knows of Aldridge's good reputation as an audience-pleaser and feels emboldened to be a
trailblazer as well. In the second act, Aldridge feels betrayed by lack of support at the top, especially after a spate of vicious reviews and the subsequent cold feet of the company's board. Their long argument, mounting finally to a violent outburst, would have built up to that point more interestingly with some variation of intensity that didn't require simply planting the feet and yelling at each other. Brant Hughes's LaPorte was believable but somewhat hard to understand with his full-volume French-accented shout. 

The casting of Wilke was a credible choice visually, given his relatively light complexion. To me, this makes more poignant the hostility Aldridge  encounters in the grossest racial terms. He's described as "black as your hat" and in the revolting reviews, the actor's American accent is taken to be an inability to pronounce words properly through thick lips. Whether Wilke is in fact similar in skin tone to the real Aldrige is almost immaterial. That's because Shakespeare's exotic warrior on behalf of Venice is clearly meant to come from the other side of the Mediterranean, from Morocco and points east, not from sub-Saharan Africa. This distinction is sometimes ignored when white actors have played Othello and are excessively blackened. It's sufficient for an Othello not to look Italian, frankly. Racism has always been able to make fine distinctions between outsiders and insiders.

Aldridge illustrates jealous Othello's power over Desdemona.

Liz Carrier was effective and seemed ready to learn from Aldridge's explicit realism as the actress playing Desdemona, the historical star Ellen Tree. It's hard to believe that Ellen Tree and Charles Kean would soon marry, but that opposition seems to be a concept of the playwright that this production has to follow. Other female roles are well-filled by Hannah Embree, Kendall Maxwell, and Rachel Kelso. 

The story is movingly and imaginatively embodied through appropriate costume designs by Karen Cones. Producer Marcia Eppich-Harris' sound design has a notable underpinning in the recorded introduction to each of the acts: a solo piano version of the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem. One translation of the original's first strophe runs like this: "Lamentable is that day on which the guilty man shall arise from the ashes to be judged." In our secular minds and with the implicit justice behind eventually honoring the true identities of all people, guilty social structures will face judgment as well.

[Photos: Indy Ghost Light]