Hirschfeld, NY Times Aug 2, 1981 NY Times ad Feb. 14, 1982

1. --> March 22, 1982, Women's Wear Daily interview
2. --> Misc. articles & reviews
3. Canadian articles and reviews about the 1982 Broadway production of Othello (These are on a separate page because this page has grown quite large.)
4. --> February 4, 1982, The New York Times, Theater Review: Stage: Jones and Plummer's 'Othello', by Frank Rich
5. --> February 14, 1982, The New York Times, Stage View: The Jones-Plummer 'Othello' Is Twice-Blessed, by Walter Kerr
6. --> August 30, 1981, The New York Times, Riveting Summertime Shakespeare, By Walter Kerr
7. --> August 22, 1981, The New York Times, Stage: Plummer, Jones Star in New 'Othello', By Mel Gussow
8. --> March 18, 1982, The New York Times, Shakespeare: Hit Broadway Playright, By Walter Kerr
9. --> March 9, 1982, The New York Times, Plummer: 'Thank God, I'm Not a Superstar', By Leslie Bennetts
10. --> May 22, 1982, U.P.I., Tony nominee Christopher Plummer Finds Iago an exhausting role, By Glenn Currie
11. --> January 31, 1982, The New York Times, The Search for The Ideal Othello
12. --> August 2, 1981, The New York Times, James Earl Jones Prepares to Map the Tormented Soul of Othello
13. --> September 10, 1981, Washington Post, Theater Review: 'Othello' in Sure Hands
14. --> September 22, 1981, The Washington Post, Plummer's Classic Magic
15. --> October 18, 1981, The Boston Globe, Jones Speaks, Forsooth, The Tragedy of Othello
16. --> October 21, 1981, The Boston Globe, Marquee \ Zoe Caldwell Comes to the Aid of 'Othello'
17. March 15, 1982, People Magazine interview

March 15, 1982, People Magazine

Toronto Star photo Oct. 6, 2002. (Related article at CTV.ca)

Misc. articles & reviews

---

February 4, 1982

By the end of the "Othello" that opened on Broadway last night, you will, I think, ache for James Earl Jones noble Moor - a massive mountain of strength reduced to so much dust in his smothered Desdemona's boudoir. But up until then, you may ache even more for Christopher Plummer's Iago.

Mr. Plummer, a sensational actor in peak form, has made something crushing out of Shakespeare's archvillain. He gives us evil so pure - and so bottomless - that it can induce tears. Our tears are not for the dastardly Iago, of course - that would be wrong. No, what Mr. Plummer does is make us weep for a civilization that can produce such a man and allow him to flower. We weep because the distant civilization that nurtured Iago is all too similar to the one that has given us a Hitler or two of our own.

This "Othello," a revamped version of the one that originated in Stratford, Conn., last summer, has more than its Iago to offer. Although there is one glaring casting error - Dianne Wiest's Desdemona - the production at the Winter Garden is a vigorous conventional reading of Shakespeare that usually hurtles forward with headling speed. But it's simply impossible to take one's mind - or eyes - from Mr. Plummer, because his work here is awesome.

Lithe and trim in his tight-fitting tunics and leather boots, he's a bristling hornet of a man, even his hair, mustache and angular joints seem as sharp as porcupine quills. His voice is brittle, even metallic, but never so much as to betray Iago's true designs on his prey. Obsequiously commiserating with Othello - or good-naturedly prodding Cassio to take a fateful drink - Mr. Plummer wittily accomplishes the crucial task of making Iago a double-edged blade: we never doubt that his victims would mistake his poisonous deceptions for the devotion and counsel of an honest friend.

Left alone to address the audience, Mr. Plummer ceases to be the consummate Machiavelli and shows us another man. When he vows to turn Desdemona's "virtue into pitch," his eyes burn and his arm whips through empty space as if to stir a witches caldron. Weaving "the net that shall enmesh them all," he turns the word "enmesh" into a shudder that seems to envelop the audience like a web. Yet he doesn't stop there. The most scary aspect of this villain is that his malignancy really does seem motiveless.

While Mr. Plummer indicates Iago's resentment of Cassio by referring to the lieutenant's Florentine origins and "proper" bearing with effete, high pitched condescension, he also makes it clear that Cassio is but a minor irritant in his case against all mankind - a fly easily swatted away. While Mr. Plummer pays lip service to the sad speculation that his wife Emilia may be unfaithful, it's apparent that he doesn't really care. His is a sexless Iago who playfully kisses men and women alike because he has no use for either. He may tolerate Emilia's fond caresses if that's what it takes to pry away Desdemona's handkerchief, but, once he has what he wants, he shuts off his affection as if he were slamming a steeltrap.

Who is the Iago who exists underneath the many cynical poses? I think we see him most clearly in Mr. Plummer's eerie moments of utter stillness "I hate the Moore!" he booms in the opening scene, to reassure the foolish Roderigo ( a wonderfully slimy Graeme Campbell) that they are indeed allies against Othello. But when Mr. Plummer repeats the same line to himself a few moments later - or tells us "I am not what I am" - the words are said quietly, enigmatically, as if they come from an icy, impenetrable netherworld. It is Mr. Plummer's special gift that he gives up peaks into a nihilistic void of a soul - a mysterious, inexplicable blackness that is horrifying precisely because it cannot be explained away.

If Mr. Jones's imposing black hero isn't quite as multidimentional, he is still impressive, and, in his hushed final collapse, daring. Against the dissonantly buzzing gadfly of Mr. Plummer, he provides a ramrod-straight Othello of resonant, exotic musicality - especially in the early speech when he tells the autobiographical saga by which he wooed his wife.

Mr. Jones's ease and authority as a military commander seem his by birthright, even as he maintains the uneasy aloofness of an outsider. Later on, his bass, chest-thumping eruptions upon summoning up his "black vengeance" shake through both his body and the house like tribal exorcisms. When he finally realizes what his vengeance has wrought, he droops to deliver his "O! O! O!" in a disembodied rumble, as if his voice were racing his body to the grave.

What he does not make credible - and, God knows, Shakespeare gives him little aid - is Othello's all too sudden transformation from self-assured leader to jealous madman. This is in part because Mr. Jones sometimes seems to overintellectualize the role to the point where Othello's "free and open nature" is masked by stolidity. Yet the actor's major handicap is his Desdemona.

Miss Wiest, a good actress in contemporary plays, affects an arch, put on sweetness here that is often conveyed with pinched smiles and a candied voice; in the slapping scene, her sorrow, too, seems a bit second-hand. If there's not a flowing, open-hearted Desdemona to balance Iago, an Othello can't easily dramatize the hero's violent swings between the author's poles of good and evil.

The rest of the cast, well-costumed by Robert Fletcher, is fine: Kelsey Grammer's noble but not syrupy Cassio; David Sabin's aggrieved Brabantio; Patricia Mauceri's saucy, tender Bianca; Raymond Skipp's rational Lodovico and Robert Blurr's fatuous Duke of Venice. Aideen O'Kelly's Emilia is outstanding. She keeps her secret sadnesses and fears to herself until the climax, at which point her calm voice and maternal demeanor break apart in quivering despair.

While the direction is credited to Peter Coe, Zoe Caldwell took over his chores during the later stages of the production's pre-broadway tour. A few hokey freeze-frames aside, the staging is vibrant and fluid - most notably in the prefigurative hurly-burly that takes us from Venice to Cyprus and in the fight scenes (choreographed by B.H. Barry) that erupt during Cassio's drunken binge.

David Chapman and Marc B. Weiss, who also did inventive work on "The First" this season, have contributed evocative scenery and lighting. Mr. Chapman's oval-shaped, balconied set, with its ever-changing configurations of poles and canvas drapes, makes full use of the Winter Garden's vast stage, as well as of its orchestra pit. Mr. Weiss fills a huge cyclorama with burning sunsets and inky nights that join Mr. Plummer in beckoning us directly into hell.
________________________________
Descent Into Hell
OTHELLO , by Shakespeare; directed by Peter Coe; sets by David Chapman; costumes by Robert Fletcher; Hair design by Patrik D. Moreton; fights staged by B.H. Barry; Music by Stanley Silverman; production stage manager Thomas Keily; Presented by Barry and Fran Weissler, in association with CBS Video Enterprises by arrangement with Don Gregory. At the Winter Garden, Broadway and West 50th Street.
Othello ..... James Earl Jones
Desdemona ..... Diane Wiest
Casio ..... Kelsey Grammer
Iago .... Christopher Plummer
Emilia ..... Aideen O'Kelly
Bianca ..... Patricia Mauceri
Roderigo Graeme Campbell
Duke of Venice ..... Rober Burr
Brabantio ..... David Sabin
Gratiano ..... Richard Dix
Lodovico Raymond Skipp
Montano ..... Robert Burr
Gentlemen of Cyprus ..... Robert Ousley, Harry S. Murphy and Bern Sundstedt
Senators of Venice ..... Mr. Ousley and Mr. Murphy
Servants to Brabantio ..... Randy Kovitz, Ellen Newman, Mr. Ousley and Bern Sundstedt
Cypriots ..... Miss Newman and Mr. Kovitz
Officers ..... Mr. Ousley, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Sundstedt

February 14, 1982

A number of sensitive and sometimes bold improvements have been made in the James Earl Jones-Christopher Plummer "Othello" since it first stirred excitement in Connecticut last summer, and I think none is proving more helpful at the Winter Garden than an unexpected and sorrowing calm that descends - if only briefly - upon the Moor and the bride he is preparing to kill.

The respite, the pause filled with quiet regret and then with something more, comes quite well along in the devious but inexorable march toward a murder. Mr. Jones, as Othello, has long since succumbed to the ever-so-plausible promptings of Mr. Plummer's Iago. He has permitted himself to imagine his adored Desdemona unfaithful, he has fallen into the seizure that the new tensions inside him must provoke, he has publicly struck his wife across the cheek and demanded to know if he is not in fact a whore. We are not yet into the last scene between them, only the next-to last. But the scene itself is instantly aflame with a fury Desdemona cannot grasp; as she falls to her knees in terror, she is being bombarded with talk of devils and of being double-damned. "Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell!" is the thunder she now hears cracking overhead.

And then - for a few mysterious seconds - the fever breaks. Desdemona, body curled double in despair and retreat, is already in near-foetal position. Looking down at her, and possibly seeing her for the bewildered, unformed creature she is, this Othello slowly and gently lowers himself, stretches out his massive military arms, and draws the folds of his voluminous cloak over both of them. As his body shelters her, conforms to hers, the two seem little more than children lost in a fairy-tale forest and falling asleep beneath a blanket of snow. Their love for each other, so rapidly being destroyed, is in the silence. The silence is finally broken with a surprisingly hushed, tender reading of a line that a hundred Othellos have read in a hundred different ways: "O Desdemona! Away! away! away!" Secretly, scarcely daring to let himself hear the words he is pronouncing, he sounds as though her were toying with the notion of an impossible flight that will bring her to safety, safety from the treacherous world into which he has stumbled, safety from himself.

You can hear the other readings of the line in your head: cries of still angry dismissal, abrupt refusals to continue his own torment, a delaying tactic while he weighs what she has said, whatever. They've all been done. But this one, with Othello virtually in tears despite himself, seems to me not only affecting as a passing image but of enormous practical value to the play's structure. Most productions, and most performances of the title role, are so entirely concerned with making us believe, step by step by step, in the Moor's distrust of his wife that they quite forget his love for his wife. But these two things coexist - Othello loves his wife even as he is sacrificing her to his code of honor - and the tensions of the play's climax depends upon their coexistence.

It's never very interesting just to watch a man become more and more gullible from 9 o'clock, say, till 11. If there's no tug-and-pull, no yes-and-no, going on inside him, the single-minded advance of the narrative becomes monotonous; and he, in turn, turns into little more than a fool. When Peter Coe's original production opened in Connecticut five months ago, its Desdemona was inadequate. The result was that we not only disbelieved in her, we disbelieved in Mr. Jones love for her and the whole passionate struggle that caps the evening's turbulence. Mr. Jones had no partner with whom to contend, no lost prize to mourn and destroy; the final third of an otherwise brilliant mounting flagged seriously.

Now, with the playfully naïve freshness of Dianne Wiest's Desdemona inviting Mr. Jones to dote on her and to suspect her in the same perplexed instant, and with Zoe Caldwell's restaging of the simultaneously intimate and violent final passages between these two, the production is healed and becomes whole. Miss Weist is new to our stages and very young; in all probability she has no great range as yet. But here she has made a most intelligent decision. The text is constantly calling Desdemona a "child"; Desdemona uses the word on herself. And so a child she becomes, pressing Cassio's cause far beyond wisdom because she is so inexperienced, so utterly without guile; unabashedly mooning over her Moor, and he over her, after what has patently been a particularly festive nightlong of love-making.

Now that the infatuation between them is being kept foolishly and then fervently alive, the play takes on its much needed emotional uncertainty. Of course we know how it is all going to end. But, as this Desdemona and Othello quite openly bring their love out of doors, as Mr. Jones steadfastly maintains at least a show of confidence in her ("She had eyes and chose me"), as husband and wife huddle together pitifully before distrust at last breeds death, we are teased toward an indispensable question: "Is there a chance, just a chance, it won't happen? Need it happen?" Thus the play can renew itself nightly. And Mr. Jones, as an actor, is now able to complete the Othello he began so promisingly in August. From the sly humor of his early intimation that it may have been Desdemona who proposed ("Upon this hint I spoke") to his simple, factual, desperately honest valedictory ("Speak of me as I am"), the performance is now all of apiece, and masterly.

Christopher Plummer's Iago was astonishing to begin with and has, incredibly, grown richer with repeated performing. It is quite possibly the best single Shakespearean performance to have originated on this continent in our time. Certainly, it is the most original, in the best sense of the word. We have all seen fine Iagos, maybe more than our share; in any event, Iago has a reputation for running off with the play. But this is the first Iago I know of to use despair as a source of energy.

The energy itself is demonic in its thrust, incapable of stillness yet eternally clear in its ferocious busyness, always on the edge of laughter yet unable to release the laughter except as malice. Quick to mock, Mr. Plummer scarcely cares whether the mockery wounds: he turns the word "senator" into a prolonged hiss, but doesn't so much as glance to see whether or not his target has felt the dart. He is a professional soldier and his responses are prompt, precise: When he drops his body into a bow, he makes the obeisance so brazenly mechanical as to become an insult.

He knows that the best tool of vice is virtue. Seize what is good about your intended victim and you can kill him with it. Does the Moor have an "open and generous nature"? Fine. We'll start to work there. Is Desdemona kindly, quick to help others? Many a death can come of that. In the inverted agility of his wit, in the outward reach of his tentacles, he is not examining others for their youthful flaws. He wishes to undo them with their rectitude. He will destroy the world with its own faith, hope and charity.

He is flaw enough for one universe. For he is a loser, this Iago, a man passed over for reasons he cannot fathom but must face. No one is going to rescue him; his skills are of no account. He has intelligence, bonhomie, physical daring. But a Cassio will always be preferred. He doesn't know why; neither do we. But there is no need to know. One has only to be Iago, or to look into the very cold heat behind his pale blue eyes, to know how it feels not to be preferred. A different man, perhaps a more virtuous man, might wilt under the rejection. Iago takes fire from it. If he cannot use his talents for good purposes, he will use them for bad - for monstrously bad, in order to love his "betters," see and feel the scale of them. How else is a neglected man to employ himself?

Mr. Plummer so enjoys playing the consummate hypocrite that one comes not only to admire but even to like this Iago for his extraordinary gifts, those gifts that are going to get him nowhere. The sardonic grace with which he pretends resignation ("We cannot all be masters"), the vocal caress with which he bathes the stage as Othello arrives in Cyprus to embrace his Desdemona, the earnest humility with which he begs off being asked to praise Desdemona for fear of seeming a hypocrite, are indelible images to be stored away in a permanent Shakespeare prompt-book - if only there were one. As it is, I think you will find it difficult to rid your head of the terrible ashen agony on Mr. Plummer's face whenever he is left alone to do his plotting. His nimble, driven mind keeps turning over, inventing, inventing. His heart remains heavy, knowing it all can be done but that nothing that is done will ever help him. The fatigue of the man is translated into the incessant activity of the man; when the repose is impossible, one must race forward to ruin. The concept is brilliant, the execution of it perfect.

The physical production at the Winter Garden does have a few splintery edges. In particular, there are several freeze frames brought about by the quite arbitrary light changes that have no stylistic relation to the staging as a whole. But the very flexible draperies designed by David Chapman are both useful and handsome as they flare into storm winds and subside into bedchambers, and the supporting company is helpful where it counts most. Aideen O'Kelly is a splendidly spoken Emilia, slow to grasp the intricacies of her husband's treachery; Kelsey Grammer is appealing and plausible as the youthful Cassio who has superseded Iago; David Sabin nicely combines regret and a subdued stubbornness as a Brabantio forced most reluctantly to surrender his daughter. Robert Fletcher's costumes, especially those newly devised for Miss Wiest, are exemplary.

[This article is about the first Pre-Broadway run of the production in Stratford, Connecticut]
August 30, 1981

STRATFORD, Ct. I am greatly cheered to report that with ''Othello,'' now entering its final week at Stratford, Ct., the American Shakespeare Theater and director Peter Coe have suddenly and rather startlingly got hold of two things: a system and a show.

The system, described in a program note by the newly appointed Mr. Coe, promises to forget all about the gimmickry and even the lavish scenery so often associated with current mountings of Shakespeare and to focus on the tumbling, thundering, waterspill of speech. To this end, the acting area is now composed of the same neutrally colored but strangely warm wood that circles the auditorium; it is also compressed into quite a limited space, offering us Venice and Cyprus in a bandbox.

Actually, there is little sacrifice of range or vigor: when it comes time for the street-brawl that sends soldiers and their strumpets hurtling in all directions while a drunken Cassio draws the blood that will destroy his career, the staging is as swift, fluid and violent as anyone would care to have it be. Even the quieter, more seductive passages make remarkably flexible use of the balcony, inner stage and few filigreed windows carried over from a stage like the Globe's. Physically and visually, there is variety aplenty. And the speech, the cleanly articulated and forcefully paced imagery that Mr. Coe is after, is there. With the players thrown more closely together and their concentration increased, explosions of sound go hand in hand with eruptions of thought: they become the same thing. With the woeful exception of Shannon John's Desdemona, and an occasional treadmill reading from one or two others, the company is unexpectedly uniform in its urgent clarity; it's a long time since anyone heard a play's heralds, servants, soldiers and incidental senators all cleaving the air with the same intelligible passion as that supplied by the occasion's stars. Whatever preparatory methods Mr. Coe may be using before ushering his actors onto their compression-chamber stage, the playing level here has taken an upward leap that - if sustained - could breathe entirely new life into the Connecticut venture. We are given permission to hope.

I suppose one important requisite for a house filled with hastily assembled actors possessed of little common training is the presence of several richly experienced performers standing front and center to set the pace. They're here: in the massively intelligent confidence of James Earl Jones's Othello and the sometimes grave, sometimes archly witty, always superb animation of Christopher Plummer's Iago. These two men not only serve as models to help identify and establish a new style for the Stratford assembly, they complement and counterpoint each other so richly, so bitterly, so deftly and with such swift challenge that they end up creating not just a dual guest appearance for summertime Shakespeare but a venture that commands continuing attention, a show that should be fixed wherever it needs fixing and then moved on to be seen at large. At the moment, the evening steadily embroils the audience in its constantly compounded tensions for about two-thirds of the way; after that, its power is somewhat dissipated as scenes become fragmented and key relationships thin out. But this is a distinctive ''Othello,'' driven by its own strange demons, and not an achievement to be scuttled after a few trial weeks.

Its most distinguished and most painfully, playfully sustained vision comes with Christopher Plummer's Iago. To be sure, Iagos generally do run away with ''Othello.'' The part can be played in a dozen or so ways, all of which seem to be good. But I have never seen it played this way. When I speak of something ''painful'' in this villain's slyness - ''painful'' even when he is dancing in glee about a Roderigo who might just go drown himself - I mean to suggest that there is a curious quality in this too clever man that could make you ache for him as he aches for himself. There is no obvious bid for pity, or any sort of sentiment. Nothing like that. The surface of the role is agleam with secret humor, with a liar's exuberant delight in his ability to fabricate tales so earnestly that he must be called ''honest.'' There is nothing funnier in the evening than Mr. Plummer's ever so frequent protestations that he can't bear giving scandal or even circulating gossip (''I do not like the office,'' ''I am much to blame''). His profound regret at having to pass on shocking news is delectable; so is his worrisome need to adopt the role of father-confessor (''Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy''). The tricks of Iago's trade are curled lovingly on the actor's tongue.

But from the beginning there is something else. Sitting with Rogerigo late at night, hair slightly dishelved and face a shade haggard, he seems to have come to the end of a day that, in effect, ended his life. His disappointment at having been passed over for Cassio is all we have to go on here. But, as we detect a bleak and rueful shadow behind the professional sparkle of his eyes, we feel this failure to rise in the line of command is not a temporary failure but a final one. Whatever he does, however cunning and useful and loyal he may be, his disappointment is an ultimate disappointment. Esteem in the eyes of other men is simply not going to be his lot; the situation is terminal. What then? Why show his cunning, manipulate the lot of them (not Othello alone), let them know where esteem rightly belongs. Does he take pleasure in his trickery? Yes, some. But only above the ache. For his despair is ultimate, too. He knows that his cleverness will work. And he knows that it won't be worth it.

This double awareness - pride in his infinite craft, contempt for what the craft will bring him - pierces the play like a knife. Mr. Plummer incorporates a few bits of business I confess I don't understand: kissing both Roderigo and Desdemona on the mouth, almost as though he were looking for any kind of love; taking out his anguish on a chair he's awkwardly tumbled over. But it will be a long while before I forget the melancholy indifference in his eyes as he leans back from placing a dagger between the epileptic Othello's teeth and mutters, with a snarl that has no hope in it, ''Work on, my medicine, work!''

(His machinations do move on; he is forever left behind.) Of course, these secret glimpses are offered us only when he is alone or unheard. When he is dallying with his victims, he has a puppeteer's blithe humor and a wonderfully sober countenance with which to mock the world. The performance, in every showy facet and in the bitterness beneath, is stunning.

Strapping in the majesty of his white-panelled robes, James Earl Jones asserts his authority early and matter-of-factly. Undisturbed by finding himself in unfamiliar surroundings, indifferent to the brouhaha ringing through the alleyways after his secret marriage to Desdemona, he is casual in his command of the streets and the courts. There is no sense that he is among strangers, and possibly vulnerable. He is at home in all homes; his easy power opens doors.

GRAPHIC: Illustrations: photo of James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer

[This article is about the first Pre-Broadway run of the production in Stratford, Connecticut]
August 22, 1981

STRATFORD, Conn. The matching of James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer in ''Othello'' at the American Shakespeare Theater brings to mind other historical pairings. Mr. Jones and Mr. Plummer are major classical actors, and their ''Othello'' is clearly a contest of equals.

By now, Mr. Jones has earned the right to share the title of America's ''Othello'' with Paul Robeson. It is regrettable that British Actors Equity did not allow him to accept the invitation to play the character in the BBC television production. He first acted ''Othello'' in Central Park in 1964, repeating his performance Off Broadway. In his return to the role, one naturally misses the feeling of discovery, as he must miss it too as an actor. However, in the intervening years he has grown emotionally as well as physically. Mr. Jones always was a big actor even when playing such small roles as the Prince of Morocco. His voice, as moviegoers know from the Darth Vader echo chamber, is a booming baritone. Could Robeson have been more resonant? Mr. Jones's barrel-chested bearing gives him a monarchical presence. We can envision him conquering kingdoms as well as winning Desdemonas, and when he begins his pursuit of that incriminating handkerchief, the search soon becomes an obsession. Between his ''Othellos,'' Mr. Jones has played ''King Lear,'' and there is more than a touch of Lear in his final madness, as he brings the world crashing down on himself.

In every sense, he is a heavyweight. Mr. Plummer, in trim fighting shape, looks slight in comparison. As Iago, he is a nimble gadfly, charting a most insidious course, buzzing gossip in his general's ear, with every taunt putting another dent in Othello's armor.

At first, Mr. Plummer seems too antic. He does an occasional dance step and chances a lyric of a song - reminding us of his devilish ''Arturo Ui'' - but, as we soon realize, his Iago has the most vile manner. He seethes with envy and oozes malice, and his jealousy extends past Cassio and even to Desdemona. At one point, he suddenly kisses her on the mouth, which startles her and the audience. Mr. Plummer is a sinister surgeon; his ''medicine'' is poisonous. He reaches his apex at the conclusion of Act I when his campaign of vilification is successful, and exits - arm in arm - with his comrade Othello.

The two central performances are so strong and other aspects of the production are so negligible that the lesser characters are all but obliterated on stage. As director, Peter Coe does little to expand the canvas. Subplots, subtleties and atmosphere are minimized. Robert Fletcher's unimaginative scenery might suit a pasteboard puppet-theater production of the play; there is scant differentiation between battlement and bedchamber.

The early scenes with Roderigo, the Duke and Desdemona's enraged father seem perfunctory. The people become pawns to set the drama in motion. Shannon John has the face of a fashion model, but her Desdemona is childlike in voice and manner; she is an unconvincing consort for a warrior hero. Geoanne Sosa's Bianca is single-edged; she simply accents the woman's coarseness, and Kelsey Grammer's Cassio is as bland as he is handsome. Only @Aideen O'Kelly's Emilia can offer competition to the two stars. One feels her strength even in silence as she waits to reveal the burden of Iago's machinations.

With some dramatic justification, Stratford's Othello and Iago treat the subsidiary figures as objects to bend to their will. Mr. Plummer very casually quenches the final breath out of Graeme Campbell's foolish Roderigo. Mr. Jones slaps Miss John across the face with a letter, throws her to the floor and kicks her aside. Mr. Plummer is acting out of malevolence, but the brutality of Mr. Jones's gestures seems almost a reflex. Convinced of his wife's infidelity, he regards her as a personal humiliation.

Mr. Coe's staging, somewhat slow in the long first act, quickens as the play approaches its climax. Cornering his wife in their chamber, Mr. Jones towers over her. In her nightdress, Miss John looks even smaller and more fragile than before. He snuffs out her life as if she were a candle, and then moans his loss. Faced with the truth of his terrible deed, he confronts his tragedy with the anguish of abandonment. Then he stabs himself through his voluminous cape, ritualistically twisting the blade as if he were a samurai committing harakiri.

The Stratford ''Othello,'' which opened Thursday night, is not a completely realized production of the play, but a mano a mano encounter between two formidable actors. When they are in action, it is an evening of fire (Mr. Jones) and brimstone (Mr. Plummer).

The Cast
OTHELLO, by William Shakespeare; directed by Peter Coe; set and costume designs, Robert Fletcher; lighting design, Marc B. Weiss; staged fight sequences, B.H. Barry. Presented by the American Shakespeare Theater, Stratford, Conn.
Othello ..............................James Earl Jones
Desdemona ................................Shannon John
Cassio .................................Kelsey Grammer
Iago ..............................Christopher Plummer
Emilia .................................Aideen O'Kelly
Bianca ...................................Geoanne Sosa
Roderigo ..............................Graeme Campbell
The Duke of Venice and Montano ............Robert Burr
Brabantio .................................David Sabin
Gratiano ..................................Richard Dix
Lodovico ................................Raymond Skipp
Gentlemen of Cyprus Robert Ousley, Harry Murphy and Stephen Nesbitt
Senators of Venice Robert Ousley and Harry Murphy
Herald ......................................Kim Bemis
Servants to Brabantio Ellen Newman and Bern Sundstedt
Soldiers .............David Garfield and Jeff Schwartz

GRAPHIC: Illustrations: photo of Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones

March 18, 1982

DO you realize that if Shakespeare were alive and well and living in New York, right this minute he'd be taking home $25,000 a week in royalties?

That would no doubt be his cut of the box-office take at the Winter Garden these days, where a little item called ''Othello'' is playing to larger audiences than anything in town except the two top musicals. Established writers can usually claim 10 percent of the gross, and Shakespeare became a part of the literary-theatrical establishment of London with what was probably his very first play, ''Henry VI, Part One.'' We don't think an awful lot of that particular ''Henry'' these days, but Elizabethan audiences seem to have been unusually quick to catch on and they not only hurried to ''Part One'' but came back later for Parts Two and Three. Furthermore, Shakespeare seems to have been a canny chap where money was concerned, good at counting the house, claiming his just desserts, and all that. With ''Othello,'' I suspect he'd have basked not only in the success of his lovely play, but also in its abundant spoils.

I like to think, too, that it would amuse and possibly please him to note that enormous blocklong sign that dominates the Winter Garden block on Broadway with its splashy assertion that stars James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer are now to be seen on a stage that has in the past accommodated the likes of Al Jolson, Olsen and Johnson, Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Rosalind Russell, Barbra Streisand and ''West Side Story.''

Stranger to Broadway

Actually, Shakespeare's plays are being done all the time, and we don't have to worry about their availability. But when we want to see them we usually have to look them up in summertime playhouses complete with greenswards, in downtown auditoriums on Second Avenue or at Sheridan Square, or in Off Broadway nooks and crannies given over to limited runs for subscription audiences. If you'd been determined to catch Nicol Williamson's ''Macbeth'' this season - and I'm pretty sure you weren't - you'd have had to ride that escalator down to the medium-sized Circle in the Square. And if you now have it in mind to see what newcomer William Hurt can do with Maurice Evans's old standby, ''Richard II,'' you'll have to hie yourself downtown to 12th Street and the Entermedia (big enough house, but well off the beaten path). You don't think of the Bard as The Man Who Owns Broadway, to steal an elderly title from George M. Cohan.

Of course Broadway has occasionally been hospitable, and for extended periods, too. Once Maurice Evans had shown us how singable the urgent music of ''Richard II'' was, we stayed with him through Broadway ''Hamlets'' (two of them as I recall, one straight, one wartime G.I.) ''Macbeth'' and ''Twelfth Night.'' And ''Othello'' itself knocked off 296 performances at the Shubert when the Theatre Guild put it together, handsomely, with Paul Robeson and Jose Ferrer.

But to take Shakespeare out of the rep class and enter him in the sweepstakes normally dominated by smash musicals means that a production has got to be a lot more than serviceable. It's got to have a touch of greatness about it, a first-time freshness and a you've-never-seen-this-before indelibility, if it's to proclaim itself a hot ticket after 400 years.

I feel confident that Shakespeare, if he were here and so much in pocket, would agree that he'd earned his money and that Mr. Plummer and Mr. Jones had earned their billboard.

Reading an interview with Mr. Plummer that appeared in these columns not long ago, I first cocked my head skeptically. The actor was talking about how dissatisfied with the role of Iago he'd been during early rehearsals. Iago seemed to him little more than a work horse, busy, busy, busy with his lies and other chicanery, but reaping little in the way of poetic reward for his trouble. All of the play's beautiful language belonged to Othello, and how was a plot-serving drudge ever going to compete with that?

I cocked my head skeptically because I knew, and because Mr. Plummer had to know, that right down through history Iago has stolen more than Othello's handkerchief, he has stolen Othello's play. The theft is legendary, and is often taken to be inevitable. When Donald Wolfit played Othello on tour in the British provinces - the story goes - he was dismayed to discover that Iago got all the notices. As he moved on to the next town, he discharged his Iago and hired an inferior actor to replace him. The inferior actor now got all the notices. For the third stop, Wolfit replaced him with a still less able player, who, of course, promptly purloined whatever praise was going. A week later Wolfit was playing Iago.

Now, I haven't the faintest notion whether this particular theatrical chestnut is truth or fable: the only time I saw Wolfit was in a film, ''Room at the Top,'' in which he gave a most satisfying realistic performance. (''The Dresser,'' as you've undoubtedly heard, is said to be based in part on Wolfit's barnstorming days, though it's ''Lear'' and not ''Othello'' he's raging through here.) But even if the tale is nothing more than a backstage joke, it's got that grain of truth in it that all enduring jokes must have, and it struck me that Mr. Plummer was being a bit disingenuous in pretending not to know that he had the killer part, the steal, the walkaway.

Right About Othello's Lines

Then I checked myself. It so happens that I'd been watching, and listening to, Mr. Plummer on this country's stages and on Canada's for close to 30 years. I've seen, and heard, his Henry V, his Antony, his Aguecheek, his Hamlet and Oedipus and Orestes, his Macbeth and God knows what else. And I realized that, even if he'd been handed the part that his colleagues considered an all-time plum, he might possibly be the one actor we have who could hear a still greater richness in another man's lines, rolling at him across the stage. And he's right about Othello's lines. There are none more beautiful.

I think, then, we can take as entirely honest his account of his early fretfulness, a fretfulness that may - ironically - have helped spur him on to the dazzling Iago he's lashed into being.

Now that Nicol Williamson has given us not only his ''Hamlet'' but his ''Macbeth'' I do wish he'd consider undertaking the kind of training in reading verse that Mr. Plummer must have put himself through long, long ago. Mr. Williamson, a fine naturalistic actor, is stubborn. He wants Shakespeare's verse to be naturalistic, too. Not only prosily naturalistic, but adenoidally naturalistic, as casual and singsong as the rhythms of a Cockney greengrocer.

I suspect he is after what is called the common touch, determined to rid Shakespeare of his more ''aristocratic'' interpreters. But if there is a class distinction being made here, it is being made by Mr. Williamson, who seeks to impose a single and specific social level on the playwright's all-purpose, multiple-level poetry.

Speaking verse well isn't a matter of getting tony about it all. It's simply a matter of doing justice to the kind of cadence and imagery that actually inhabits the lines. The question isn't: How do real people really speak on today's streets? It's more nearly: What kind of language is this, and how is it best heard? Besides, when Shakespeare wanted to be ''low,'' he knew how to be.

On to the Entermedia.

GRAPHIC: Illustrations: photo of Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones

But off stage, Christopher Plummer is dapper and smiling, nattily attired in a pinstriped suit with a coral-colored shirt, the exemplar of gracious living as he sips his wine, picks at his celery remoulade and talks about doing another movie to earn enough money to buy ''a place in the sun.''

Although pleased by the critical raves he has received in the production of ''Othello'' at the Winter Garden Theater, Mr. Plummer is taking his triumph in stride. He is, after all, the veteran of a quarter of a century of classical roles, his credits including Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry V, Leontes, Richard III, Mercutio, Cyrano de Bergerac, Antony, Orestes and Oedipus, among many others. Hailed at the age of 26 as ''a Shakespearean actor of the first rank'' by Brooks Atkinson, Mr. Plummer has since played a wide array of film roles as well, his parts ranging from Baron von Trapp in ''The Sound of Music'' to a ruthless Israeli spy in last year's ''Eyewitness.''

'Huge, Timeless Creature'

Such diverse experience notwithstanding, Mr. Plummer took his preparation for Iago very seriously, particularly his insistence that the role be left ''almost intact.'' ''Whenever I've seen the play, it has been overbalanced to Othello or to Iago, edited down either way,'' Mr. Plummer reports. ''I feel Shakespeare wrote two big performances, and I insisted most of it stay in. I wanted to give a rather daring and huge performance. Othello is on a grand scale, and I am positive Iago is meant to be, too. He's not just a little jealous man who envies Othello, seeks power, can't get it and decides to topple the world. I'm sure Shakespeare wanted him to be thought of as a huge, timeless creature possessed by the devil or by other powers over which he has no control. Whether anybody agrees with me or not, that's the performance I try to give.''

Mr. Plummer's vision of Iago as the personification of evil encompasses the actor's explanation of why Iago hates Othello. Mr. Plummer explains: ''Because Othello is pure. He also has everything Iago does not, and because he's black and a Moor and has got where he has, that infuriates Iago, who obviously is much cleverer, in a devious way. Othello is innocent. And I think Iago also loves him, too; there is sort of a love-hate relationship.''

Mr. Plummer's Iago is one who will kiss another man on the lips as readily as cast a surreptitiously lustful eye on Desdemona. The actor says that ''the suggestion of homosexuality'' was quite intentional. ''I think it is there unconsciously,'' he explains. ''Iago wants to make love to Desdemona, too. Anything he can't have, anything that's innocent and pure, he wants to have and destroy.''

'Very Contemporary Villain'

Despite the fascinating complexity of the role, Mr. Plummer concedes to having regretted accepting it while the production was in rehearsal. ''I got the feeling I had picked a real drudge,'' he says. ''He works so hard, and then God comes on. Shakespeare has given Othello wonderful poetry, and here I am, knocking my brains out and thinking, what have I done this for!''

But Iago's reception made him feel his labors were worthwhile. ''Audiences love villains, and Iago is a very contemporary villain,'' Mr. Plummer notes. ''He is without question the most mature villain Shakespeare ever wrote. Richard III is almost child's play compared with Iago, who will last forever.''

Mr. Plummer finds his current critical success particularly gratifying because there have been times when he felt somewhat undervalued in the past. ''I'm very glad they recognized what I was trying to do and gave me credit for it,'' he says. ''I've had many high points in my life, which I feel grateful for. Only sometimes have I felt that the kind of work I do best, which is the classics, has not elicited a great deal of interest - but then, that's the nature of the beast. I really do feel I'm slightly out of epoch. I don't think I'm a particularly contemporary fellow. I got in on the end of an era of gentleman theater, but the theater is very different now. I've always missed my time, because I never knew what the hell it was. I think I would have done much better as a movie actor, for example, in the 1930's; I would have been much more comfortable in the Leslie Howard-Ronald Colman era.''

Began in Canadian Repertory

Mr. Plummer attributes that sense of being ''out of epoch'' to a combination of personal tastes and family upbringing, which he describes as ''Edwardian colonial.'' Born in Toronto and raised in Montreal, he grew up with his mother and grandparents; he did not meet his father until he was 17, and then only in passing. An only child, he describes himself as ''quite spoiled'' and ''always bored with other children at school,'' preferring to ''talk to adults as my equals.'' His environment was ''very comfortable and gracious,'' he reports, ''and it was also very seductive in the wrong way, so of course I had to run away from it and become impossible.''

Mr. Plummer began his stage career in Canadian repertory groups, moving on to repertory in Bermuda and then to New York. By 1956, he had launched his reputation as a Shakespearean actor with his Henry V at Stratford, Ontario, and the Edinburgh festival.

Despite nearly three decades of good notices, somehow they have always failed to catapult Mr. Plummer into the first ranks of stardom. He claims to be undismayed. ''I'm not a superstar - thank God. Christ, to be a superstar must be extremely tiring and limiting,'' he says, waving the thought away as if it were a gnat. ''You can't play tennis till midnight, when everybody's gone. I prefer being halfrecognized on the street and getting good tables in restaurants.''

Living With Luxury

However, Mr. Plummer concedes that such standing has its drawbacks. ''Unfortunately, the really good, smashing parts do not always come my way, because they go to the first tier of superstars who are bankable,'' he notes.

Partly as a result, Mr. Plummer has done a number of somewhat forgettable films. One reason, he readily admits, is financial remuneration. Living well is extremely important to Mr. Plummer, who lunches at Le Cirque, luxuriates on the world's most fashionable beaches as often as possible and buys houses in places like Spain and the south of France as frequently as many people buy shoes.

For the last 12 years, Mr. Plummer has been married to his third wife, a former dancer and actress named Elaine Taylor, who has since made a career out of ''taking care of me,'' as Mr. Plummer puts it. He prides himself on being something of an esthete, and he and his wife share a passion for acquisition, whether of paintings, antiques or houses. ''Unless you can surround yourself with as many beautiful things as you can afford, I don't think life really has very much meaning,'' he says.

'Something in the Sun'

The Plummers have made a habit of selling their houses almost as soon as they have finished restoring them. ''I think change of decor is awfully important,'' says Mr. Plummer, who currently lives in Weston, Conn. ''There's nothing more boring than the kind of house I grew up in, where if anything was changed it was frowned upon. I think every four or five years one has to change colors, change feeling, change style. It seems to keep you from being bored and stagnant.''

At the moment, the long New York winter seems to have taken its toll, and Mr. Plummer's mind is turning elsewhere. ''I'm always looking for something in the sun, and I'm not going to get that playing Iago,'' he remarks. He discusses briefly the relative merits of Greece, bemoans the ruination of Majorca and mentions in passing his fond memories of a chateau he once owned in the south of France. ''I don't know where I'm going to die yet,'' he adds quite seriously. ''I don't think I could die in Canada; it's too bloody freezing.'' Asked whether it might be premature, at the age of 51, to be planning one's final resting place, he shakes his head. ''I think it's important to think about it,'' he says. ''There's always a rush to get there before it gets you.''

Mr. Plummer was previously married to Tammy Grimes, the actress and mother of Mr. Plummer's only child, and then to Patricia Lewis, a British journalist. Mr. Plummer is impassive on the subject of his daughter, Amanda Plummer, who starred in ''A Taste of Honey'' last year on Broadway. Mr. Plummer appears to know his daughter as little as he knew his own father. ''I see her every now and then,'' he says coolly. Shortly after Amanda was born, her father moved to England for 13 years - which was ''quite convenient,'' he says. ''I was terribly relieved; I didn't want to have anything to do with the upbringing of a child. I am really very bad at responsibility of any kind; unless it's my work, I'm hopeless. I'm afraid I'm very selfish,'' he adds, sounding rather pleased with himself.

After 'Othello,' a Film

Among his ambitions are the desire to play Lear and Prospero and to direct a film, preferably of ''The Tempest.'' But although he doesn't get bored with acting, Mr. Plummer complains that the life that surrounds the theater is ''boring and uncivilized.'' ''When you're doing it, you have to live, breathe and eat it.'' He says he misses concerts, the opera and dinner with friends, among other things. ''Othello's'' run is open-ended, but Mr. Plummer says he would like to do it through May and then do a film. ''I've got to make some money,'' he says fretfully. ''I've also got to get back in that industry; if they don't see you for a while, they think you're dead. I've always lived well beyond my means, and I wish to continue to do so.''

But altogether, Mr. Plummer concludes, he is quite satisfied with his life to date. ''I consider myself very lucky, very fortunate,'' he says. ''The only thing I possibly regret is not having a yacht, because that would have been a terrific bore, but I would have liked to have just a little castle somewhere - with proper central heating, of course.''

GRAPHIC: Illustrations: Photo of Christopher Plummer with James Earl Jones in ''Othello''

[This is a review of the pre-Broadway production of Othello in Washington]

September 10, 1981

Shakespeare may have named "Othello" after the noble Moor, brought low by the green-eyed monster, jealousy. But the play has always belonged to Iago, the crafty ensign who single-handedly engineers that great warrior's downfall.

Is that because villainy is more stageworthy than forthrightness? Does the devious mind simply have more resources at its command -- resources with which to pique our curiosity and keep us on the hook? Is the manipulator intrinsically more intriguing as a species than those he is manipulating? The questions certainly come to the fore at the Warner Theater, where the American Shakespeare Theater's production of "Othello" opened a three-week run last night. And they come to the fore precisely because the two critical roles are in very sure hands. With James Earl Jones donning the flowing robes of the Moor, and Christopher Plummer in the tight doublet of Iago, the play is as balanced theatrically as it's ever going to be. One performer is not outacting the other, tipping the scales disproportionately this way or that. No, the two actors are matched in their stature, their command of a stage and their ability to breathe vigor and sweep into the Shakespearean line.

And it is Iago -- elusive, cunning, seductive in his evildoing -- who summons our deepest interest. Othello is a simple soul; he has but one face to offer us, although it becomes progressively distorted as Iago's poisonous insinuations do their work. Iago, however, is a man of many faces, a chameleon who adapts his coloration to fit the circumstances, an opportunist who seizes upon every changing moment. He is, in short, an actor. Even in this sound and often strapping production, which provides plenty of reasons to look elsewhere, it is hard to take your eyes from him.

This is not meant to belittle Jones' performance. Othello is one of the stickier acting parts in the Shakespearean canon. His childlike open-mindedness begs for our sympathy, and yet, at the same time, he seems almost unconscionably eager to swallow the bait that Iago extends to him and to brand the faithful Desdemona a strumpet. Othello must not appear a fool, but it's difficult getting around the fact that, once he's off the battlefield, he can be led by the nose.

Jones never lets us forget the man's great, brute strength. Thumping his barrel chest in rhythmic fury and vowing to take revenge on the wife he has come to distrust, he is an awesome creature indeed. In Jones' single most powerful moment, he bends over the sleeping Desdemona and compulsively, instinctively, kneads the coverlet on her bed, as if he were a savage beast exercising his claws for the kill. But there is also a great well of boyish innocence in this hulking man. His eyes can glisten with the wonderment of the newly born, and under his gathering rage, there is the puzzlement of one who never suspected the world could contain all the treacheries that Iago is reporting back to him.

Still, Othello is a pawn. Iago is the master of this chess board and he is plotting all the moves. Sometimes with a pained sense of duty. Sometimes with a cock-a-doodle bravura that revels in the very outrageousness of his exploits. Plummer not only plays the role with the sharpness of a carving knife, he instills it with lacerating humor -- humor that usually leaves someone's reputation in tatters. Diction is even one of Plummer's weapons. Hissing the initial "s" of "senators," he makes that calling sound like a cuss word. When he talks of the net he will devise to "enmesh them all," the actor extends the "sh" into the brooding air, so that you can actually hear the cords tightening.

It is, of course, easy to make Iago vile. Plummer does more. He makes him a dandy, as well -- an ambiguous courtier who kisses both men and women resoundingly upon the lips, and slaps their cheeks heartily, gestures that could be taken for camaraderie, if they didn't also carry a strong sadistic charge. Even when Iago owns up to his villainy -- admitting that he seeks and finds the worst in people -- Plummer handles the confession with such a persuasive semblance of self-loathing that he gets off scot-free. The actor's intelligence is lethal and lightning-fast, and it galvanizes every scene he's in.

For the most part, he trails a sturdy supporting cast in his phosphorescent wake. David Sabin wisely makes Desdemona's father less of an outraged tyrant than a deeply grieved parent. Aideen O'Kelly has the homely good sense of Emilia and she rises majestically to her death in the last act. Graeme Campbell, flush of face and dull of wit, is a convincing Roderigo. In fact, the only serious let-down in this well-spoken cast (a cast that dispenses with the Warner's usual microphones, incidentally) is Karen Dotrice. Dotrice is not Desdemona. She is a Desdemona doll, reciting her lines in a thin, reedy voice and moving through the tragedy with a rare somnolence.

Director Peter Coe has orchestrated much of the action with a panache that is only accentuated by the swirl of Robert Fletcher's sumptuous costumes. And the fight scenes are corkers. Why, then, one wonders, does Coe allow himself to break the headlong thrust of events with periodic freezes, when all the characters but Iago are locked into gratuitous tableaux?

If this is to permit Iago the chance to voice his innermost thoughts with impunity, the ploy is dramatically unnecessary. Iago is a being who can exercise his perfidy in a crowded room with perfect aplomb. People are his playthings, after all. He needs no special hiding place. Even when he's looking his victims squarely in the eye, he is hiding from them. What is truly frightening about Iago is not the cruel thoughts he nurtures in private, but the schemes he hatches boldly in society's bosom. Taking him out of the assembled company, even momentarily, is taking him out of his very element.

He's a slippery, sexy character, all right, and the dark glory of this production. But welcome as Plummer's performance is, its fascinations really shouldn't surprise us. Iago, I suspect, has always been the reason audiences have been drawn to the play over the centuries. Calling it "Othello" doesn't change matters. The deck is clearly stacked in favor of the double-dealer.

OTHELLO, by William Shakespeare; directed by Peter Coe; sets and costumes by Robert Fletcher; lighting by Marc B. Weiss; fights staged by B.H. Barry. With James Earl Jones, Christopher Plummer, Karen Dotrice, Aideen O'Kelly, Kelsey Grammer, Graeme Campbell, Robert Burr and David Sabin.

At the Warner Theatre through Sept. 27.

September 22, 1981

Christopher Plummer admits that there have been a few times in his career when he truly hated an audience. During performances at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival (which spawned the production of "Othello," currently at the Warner Theatre, in which he plays Iago), he recalled, people would often come equipped with a text, which they would proceed to read during the performance.

"It's perfectly all right, I suppose, except that the moment you stop speaking, they look up, and when you start speaking they look down again. Very annoying. "Once I got very angry with someone who was sitting in the front row. He was very conspicuous because he was also wearing this white suit. He looked fairly well-to-do, and I was very angry with him because he looked like a man who should know better. And I picked a moment at the end of a soliloquy -- it was at the end of an act in 'King John' -- and I flicked his book into the air with my sword. And I got a tremendous round of applause and the man left the theater immediately, to our great relief.

"But at the end he had left the sweetest and most apologetic note, apologizing for the fact that he didn't realize we could see him, apologizing for disturbing us, said he didn't know the play. I felt awful. I tried to search him out and write back, because I'd done a very violent act, and I found out he was in jail! He'd been in some diamond swindle, which sounded fascinating, and they'd thrown him into some prison without bail.

"So I gave up following these little incidents. I didn't want to know about people's lives, they sounded much more dramatic than what we were doing on stage. I was quite envious."

Christopher Plummer, it would seem, has little cause for envy. During his 35-year career he has earned a reputation as a major classical actor who is equally in demand in film. Having played such parts as Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry V, Mercutio, Oedipus, Cyrano and Richard III, as well as von Trapp in "The Sound of Music," he can be said to have sought and met the challenges of the acting profession. Furthermore, he has made his peace with that strange occupation, keeping one foot firmly planted in the nether world of imagination and theater, and the other in the "real" one.

"You certainly must throw yourself into another aspect of life, or interest, in order to save your sanity. And if you do that, it's really the most delightful profession to be in. Because the world itself, looking at it today, is not particularly fascinating. At least we have that escape to go to, and earn good money at it. We travel all over the world, we're treated like bloody royalty wherever we go, whether we deserve it or not. We see the world and get paid for it, and have fun."

He is of medium height, dressed in a sports shirt and slacks, loafers without socks, a gold chain around his neck. He has longish dark hair and a mustache he grew to make Iago look somewhat discontented and bitter, as well as militaristic. He is handsome, but his features appear stronger in photographs or on stage. His voice is low, resonant, like the purr of an engine idling.

At 51 he has full control of technique ("I know how to breathe, at last") and can use his body as the full agent of the mind. His Iago is a many-layered villain, fascinating and frightening, moving some audiences to hiss even while they gasp at his perfidy.

"It's wonderful when they hiss," he says. "That's part of what it's all about."

His interpretation of Iago was influenced somewhat by his reading of articles by Shakespearean scholar Wilson Knight, who posed the theory "of the ecstasy and purity of evil," Plummer says.

"He explains the Nietzschean philosophy on the growth of all the great villains into a kind of heroic stature and purity. He compares, for example, Hitler to Christ, Hitler achieving the same kind of purity through evil that Christ did through good. They could be reversed. Hitler could have been a Christ if he'd gone the other way, and Christ, indeed one is still not sure about Christ, could have gone the other way, too.

"There is a theory that you haven't really lived until you have killed, that you are not fully grown, fully pure, until you have killed . . . The same theory can apply to Iago, because in the end he comes on absolutely secure, reveling in his own purity through evil. The end is written rather flimsily by Mr. Shakespeare -- he has not given Iago many lines in the last scenes, so you have to supply a kind of radiance, which I try desperately to do. A sort of ecstasy through evil. He's done it, and he knows whether it's worth it or not, he's arrived. He's accomplished what he set out to do . . .

"He's also a thing. I like to think of him as a . . . spider. I certainly think he is the darker side of all our natures . . . If you suddenly took all Iago away, and gave his speeches to the various people he's speaking to, you'd find they are giving a soliloquy of the darker side of their own nature. Fascinating."

Plummer, a Canadian, went on the stage at 17 after a childhood in which he was taken often to concerts and plays. His mother, who was divorced from his father, was "artistic," and for a time headed the Canadian Handicrafts Guild.

"My family were very well-read people. My grandmother used to love reading aloud after dinner. This was before television had destroyed the mind . . . My whole upbringing was verse, poetry, books -- words. I studied the piano and imagined myself as a concert pianist. But my attraction to words was greater. It didn't require all that lonely torturous work, and I preferred it because it was giving of yourself and sharing yourself with others.

His father he never knew well. "Is he still alive?" he was asked.

"I don't know," he answered impassively.

"All these little personal questions. This article must be for women. This could all be a lie -- it's not, but no one would ever know anyway."

He has a daughter by his first marriage to Tammy Grimes. He saw little of her while she was growing up, he has said, since she was here and he was most often in Europe. The daughter, Amanda Plummer, is currently one of the sensations of Broadway, making her debut in a revival of "A Taste of Honey." He says he's proud of her, but maintains a "discreet distance." If her play is still running in January, they will both be playing on Broadway.

The actor he most respects is Ralph Richardson, not just for his artistry but for his "extreme interest in life." Richardson is the only role model he has among "the knights," "because I've known them all."

"He's the only person I absolutely adore and admire in life because he has so many resources; he's not just an actor, which I try not to be. He has his own publishing firm, and he's a motorcycle fanatic . . . he still rides his motorcycle at the age of 78. He has his own wonderful romantic madness about his performing when he's in top form that is extraordinary. He's someone who's come to terms with so many aspects of the actor's life, whereas most of the old actors I've met, and one tries to avoid being like them, become quite selfish, and lonely, having not thrown themselves early enough into the rest of life. One understands why, but it is possible to do both. I watch that carefully . . ."

His other life is focused on a consuming interest in real estate. With his wife, Elaine Taylor, he buys and restores old houses and then sells them. "My wife is extraordinarily good at decorating. I'm the one who says, 'Take that wall out' or 'Heighten that ceiling.' I choose all the floors. And I'm fascinated by landscaping, that's my new interest."

Over the years -- Plummer met his wife when they both had parts in "Lock Up Your Daughters," a film Peter Coe directed in 1961 -- they have done eight houses in Europe and this country, moving most recently into a home in Connecticut.

"I've never done one from scratch," he said. "But I'm determined to do that before I get too old and settled. It keeps you young, this work. We usually live a four- or five-year span in each house; the excitement of doing another one is always there."

The dark rumble in his famous voice suggests a gathering storm as James Earl Jones tells "a round unvarnished tale" of his dissatisfactio n with "Othello." He says categorically that he wouldn't take this production to Broadway the way it is now." He pinpoints specific failures. He says that, by themselves, he, as Othello, and Christopher Plummer, as Iago, have had "to work out problems not our responsibility." He alludes to a lack of "insight and understanding" on the part of the play's director, Peter Coe. He grandstands his words beyond the theater by suggesting that "the times, the 1980s, have put the world out of joint for the deeper, the more meaningful moments" in "Othello."

Sitting in a corner in his hotel suite, breathing in steaming fumes from a portable vaporizer on a nearby table, James Earl Jones speaks like low thunder. "I'm even loathe to bring Othello' to Boston the way it is . . .

Jones' remarks - through the rasp of his strained voice and chronic cough - send an aftershock through the suite loud enough to muffle the burbling vaporizer.

The "Othello" production, opening Thursday at the Wilbur, began in August at the American Shakespeare Theater in Stratford, Conn., earning enthusiastic support from reliable critics, notably Walter Kerr of the New York Times. On the surface at least, it seemed to have potent ingredients in its costars. Having cut his talent on six earlier "Othellos," James Earl Jones had come to it with hands-on experience. Christopher Plummer joined it after a back-to- back arrangement at Stratford that had him doing a volubly praised "Henry V," in which he played both King and Chorus. Peter Coe had worked with both actors (in 1963 with Jones on "Next Time I'll Sing to You;" on a few occasions with Plummer, including the recent "Henry V"). For any critic attendant upon the 20-year up-and-down pattern of the American Shakespeare Theater the most likely failure would have been the lack of a thoroughly trained company.

But that's not the way James Earl Jones sees it.

"Othello' has two major elements, melodrama and drama. Unless you achieve a total balance, unless you fuse the melodrama with the drama, you don't have tragedy. It takes great insight - great in-sight - on the part of the director to make the elements work, complement each other. I have to say," Jones says, his words spattered by coughs, "that we are not enjoying great insights on this production. I also have to say that I did enjoy exactly those kind of insights 10 years ago when Gladys Vaughan directed me as the Moor. Maybe, after all, it's something a woman intuitively understands. The melodrama is tied to deep cynicism, the drama is tied to deep love. A male director gets the cynicism in high gear, but stalls against the love."

Not revealed at this point by Jones (but later rumored in the press) is that actress/director Zoe Caldwell has been counseling "Othello" in its Baltimore tryout. Throughout the interview Jones articulates what amounts to a pro-feminist argument. He glowingly recalls the 1942 Margaret Webster "Othello," which starred Paul Robeson, Jose Ferrer and Uta Hagen, then rushes it against the failure of a recent production he did in Los Angeles, with Anthony Zerbe and Jill Clayburgh. Insights were lacking, too, in LA.

If James Earl Jones is being hard on the Stratford "Othello," admitting that he's "afraid it started off on the wrong foot," then adding that "the production suffers from a dangerous plague," and that Peter Coe "has done all the balking he can to this point," he also says that the 1980s may, indeed, have made it "impossible to fuse the play's melodrama and drama."

"Look, we're still searching for the insights I'm talking about. And we won't stop. But it may be that audiences in 1981 can only understand the melodrama, can only get a handle on the cynicism. They cannot understand the gentle seriousness of the love between Othello and Desdemona. The '80s are a bad time for that kind of seriousness. But the cynicism registers! Boy, do audiences know the cynicism! From Nixon to Charlie Manson they know it! They know how bad and mean and ugly life can be. They can focus on that horror all right without trying. But they can't focus on other, quieter kinds of suffering, for the very reason that it's not jazzed up, distorted, frenzied. I think it's going to take a World War, or a Depression, something like that, to really bring us down to the realization how bad life really is, so, then, we can come to the up-side again. One of the reasons the Margaret Webster Othello' worked was because it came at the beginning of World War II. People were not allowed to escape the horror Shakespeare was writing about. They were forced to look at it every day on a massive scale in the world around them. In looking, they discovered themselves in personal terms, human beings in a maelstrom."

James Earl Jones, an only child, was born in 1931 in Arkabutla, Tate County, Miss. His father, Robert Earl Jones, was a prizefighter turned actor. His parents' marriage "was destroyed by the Depression," and James Earl was raised - from the age of 1 - by his maternal grandparents in Mississippi. His mother "kept in touch." Until he reached 21, he was prevented by his mother - evidently with a legal decree in her favor - from seeing his father. At the suggestion that his father abandoned his mother, Jones bristles and says that the verb "is inflammatory, you'd have to ask them." Both parents are living. His father, in fact, recently played a role on television in "The Sophisticated Gents."

James Earl Jones has trouble talking about the past. The images it summons are painful, nightmare phantoms once real and clinging. He speaks about "childhood furies." He admits that the dissolution of bond between him and his parents, particularly with his father, scarred him. He stuttered as a child and, now, his words stutter slightly, then gain control, as he explains that the lack of on-the-scene parents left him with "the feeling that you, the child, you were not good enough . . . that's something you carry with you a lifetime."

"Even the suggestion of neglect on the part of the people who were your parents - and this is even true with adopted children, I have an adopted brother Matthew - somehow carries with it that it must be my fault, it must be me. That feeling can't be avoided, no matter how hard you try, how intelligent you are, how rigorous you are with yourself."

Quickly, he shatters the memory with the growl of a friendly laugh.

"Anyway, I contacted my father when I was 21. By then I had made up my mind to become an actor. The reconciliation scene, if that's what it was, was pretty awkward. He was full of hugs and kisses, he was part of the theater, after all, but I didn't go much for hugging and kissing among grown people. But we got around that one way or another, then the first thing we did was to take out our copies of Othello.' I read Iago. It was my first taste of Shakespeare. My father, by the way, was a protegee of Paul Robeson, not as a singer, as an actor. I met Paul Robeson three times."

James Earl Jones studied at the University of Michigan, and later at the American Theater Wing under Lee Strasberg. After a number of appearances on and Off-Broadway, he came to national prominence and won a Tony Award in 1969 for "The Great White Hope," in which he played a prizefighter named Jack Jefferson, a character based on the first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson. He has performed major Shakespearian roles, Genet's "The Blacks," Fugard's "Boesman and Lena" and "A Lesson from Aloes," and toured in the one- man show "Paul Robeson," which was the topic of political backbiting by members of the Robeson family, particularly Robeson's son. He has done films ("The Great White Hope," "The Man," the voice of Darth Vader in "Star Wars" and "The Empire Strikes Back"). One of the distinctions among his television credits: He was the first black man to take a continuing role on a soap, "As the World Turns." In 1967 Jones married Julienne Marie, who played Desdemona to his Othello in a New York Shakespeare Festival production. They are now divorced. He talks longingly of his desire to have children.

Jones, whose "great and lasting heroes" are Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, has never allied himself to the civil rights movement or to particular causes ("I believe in politics through art, not politics on the sidewalk, and I've always been leery about lending my name to organizations").

Seized by a coughing spell, Jones goes to the bathroom for a glass of water. Returning, he takes off his tinted spectacles and wipes his amber brow. Big and burly at 6'l" and 2l5 pounds, as kindly now as Othello in the play's early scenes, he apologizes and says he must conserve his voice. Obviously, the production is draining him. He laughs and says, "I'd rather be doing Lear this time around than Othello. I know Lear is supposed to be harder, but I don't think that's true. Shakespeare didn't play the same games with Lear.' Lear' has a difficult first scene,but the rest is quite clear, whereas in Othello' he gives you an entire difficult play! And unless you get the balance - unless we get the balance . . ."

The distant thunder in James Earl Jones' voice hangs like a threat.

Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones were the stars of the press conference at Piaf's yesterday, but the real backstage drama came when actress director Zoe Caldwell made an unexpected appearance, confirming the rumor that she had been brought in to assist the show "Othello" in its tryout troubles.

"We're on a journey to complete the work begun last summer in Stratford, and we'll hardly have begun when it plays here," she said at the noontime gathering in the restaurant under the Wilbur Theater.

"If I lived in Boston I would rush out and spend 20 bucks to see the play here, and then when we complete our journey in New York I'd rush down there and see the play again," said the Australian-born actress.

Many a show has a rocky time in tryout tours, but Jones caused a sensation in the show world with his interview with Kevin Kelly in Sunday's Boston Globe.

In that interview (which he said he hasn't read yet), Jones listed his dissatisfactions with the play and said: "I am even loathe to bring Othello' to Boston the way it is . . ."

Yesterday, Jones was more temperate, but still pointed out that there were great difficulties with the second act.

Caldwell, who asked that no pictures be taken of her since she was not prepared for photographers, insisted that Peter Coe was still the director of the Shakespearean tragedy as he was when it opened at the American Shakespeare Theater in Stratford, Conn., last summer.

"The producers asked me as a person of the theater to continue the journey since Peter Coe has a very busy schedule and many commitments, and can't be here," she said.

"I also have the permission of Mr. Jones and Mr. Plummer to sit out front and take a part in the completion of the journey, and it's turning into one hell of a journey.

"It's a great play with great performers, and anything I can do to make the audience feel deeply the play I shall be only too happy," Caldwell said. Then she made her exit leaving the stage to the two male stars.

Jones said: "We need Miss Caldwell to come to address herself to our problems."

One of his second act problems, he said, is laughter from young members of the audience at solemn moments such as his line after he has killed Desdemona - "Not dead? Not yet quite dead."

Plummer while staying out of the controversy, added: "A lot of the young don't understand death anyway and they're impatient."

He said, speaking of the play's problems: "You never really complete a performance of Shakespeare. There is always more to learn even when you come back to a part five years later. As for me, I always wanted to play Shakespeare. When I was a kid I wanted to be a fine Shakespearean actor, and that hasn't changed."

And so "Othello," which opened last night for previews, with the press opening tomorrow, is another new show undergoing its pre-Broadway tribulations. That's what tryouts are for.