The Moor's a snore in Venice; he gets interesting in Cyprus

In

Hamlet

, Shakespeare tells us that "the play's the thing," and he could be referencing Carmen Khan's peeled-back production of

Othello

, which opened the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival's 10th season Friday night. The scenery is four large flat-topped trucks. A simple stage-rear entry is black. Everyone's dressed in a dull form of standard modern, more or less.

So a sort of naked focus turns your attention almost entirely to the play. I saw a preview Thursday, and during the first half-hour or so, that focus was a liability; this Othello was stilted, with all the hoo-hah surrounding the Moor of Venice threatening to represent the bore of Venice. The deliveries were so stiff that I was always aware of a script, or so overdone I was aware of a badly broiled steak.

Happily, we were not heading into an evening of tough meat. The festival's production sprang to life - as if it had become another theatrical property - when the Venetians moved onto Cyprus, where the newlywed Othello prepares for some Turk-bashing, his bride Desdemona in tow.

I couldn't get used to the cast's occasionally jumping on a trunk, apparently to attest that A Speech Is Being Delivered or to keep things animated. And I wanted to slip under my seat when the bedroom scene, wherein Desdemona's worst premonition comes true, began with eerie choral music that smudged the production's clear focus to announce that The Scene Will Be Delivered.

But I jogged happily along with the rest of it, not an inappropriate image given the speed with which this Othello is performed. It's not presented so much as emancipated. Given the theater's exposed playing field, the pace feels right: brash and rash and stormy, the way people are when they turn a bad situation - the gullible Othello's undoing by his own jealousy and the scheming of his aide Iago - into something that gets worse, with dispatch.

Brian Anthony Wilson revives his Othello, which he performed at the festival in 2002. He's an imposing figure with an authoritarian boom, a great chortle and a primal roar. When he's piping, in the whole second half, Wilson is an Othello whose lines could be written today.

His lovely red-haired Desdemona, Christie Parker, is convincing; she needs to go against instinct as she becomes a more pensive, troubled wife, because her hushed delivery competes with the mighty whoosh of the theater's heating system, and the machinery often wins.

Karl Hanover gives us a high-grade rat of an Iago, almost gleeful in his capacity to be increasingly despicable. Damon Bonetti's Cassio (the good guy) and Teresa Castracane's Emilia (Desdemona's handmaiden) build their characters handily.

Written by William Shakespeare, directed by Carmen Khan. Presented by the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival.

The cast: Brian Anthony Wilson (Othello), Karl Hanover (Iago), Damon Bonetti (Cassio), Christie Parker (Desdemona).

Playing at 2111 Sansom St., through May 19. (Beginning April 4, Othello will run in repertory with The Taming of the Shrew.) Tickets: $25. Information: 215-496-8001 or www.phillyshakespeare.org. EndText