Bådteatret | Apr 2012
Desdemona
By: Paula Vogel
At: Bådteatret
Playing: April 2012
Even if you are familiar with Shakespeare’s classic story Othello, you will never have heard this side of the story before. Desdemona, a Play about a Handkerchief, by Paula Vogel, addresses the age-old tale through the perspectives of three very different women: Othello’s wife, Desdemona, her maid, Emilia and Bianca, a local prostitute.
In her comic deconstruction of Shakespeare’s Othello, Vogel mixes fast-paced humour with serious questions as to the role of women through the ages. But instead of the classic, naive , passive and wrongly accused virginal Desdemona, here she is portrayed as Othello’s worst nightmare: a cynical, promiscuous aristocrat. Three strong women show just how destructive female relationships can be in a male-dominated world.