Goodbye Desdemona
at Augustine's (venue 152), Edinburgh

Munira Mirza

'Goodbye Desdemona' is by the same people who brought the Fringe First-winning 'Othello in Black and White' to Edinburgh last year.

But despite the blurb in the fringe brochure, this play is less about reinterpreting relationships in Shakespeare's plays and more about testing whether the language and drama of the works can achieve the same effect regardless of the staging context. The show begins with a shared narration by the two-man act, explaining how they came to be on this stage on their own, without the rest of their company. After the success of 'Othello', the rest of their company became jealous of their limelight (ironic, eh?) and so they were abandoned to fend for themselves and produce a play that would fulfil their fans' expectations.

The hitch is, they are two men and though they attempt an adaptation of Othello (sans Desdemona), it cannot work because their hearts are yearning to speak more romantic lyrics. Lapsing into the dialogue of the two lovers, Romeo and Juliet, they become excited by the prospect of performing it in public. But their sponsors are hostile and social taboos in their native India mean that the play is unviable. The stage hovers between the reality of the actors' predicament and the frustrated world of the two lovers they are rehearsing as.

The acting is very good and they seamlessly move from their own domesticated bickering to the weightier emotions of Shakespearean language. However, the beginning of the play is confusing and does not settle down into an intelligible narrative until the middle. It is only when the blue light transforms the stage and you see the actors perform the Shakespearean dialogue that you understand what the play is driving at - that two gay lovers with an Indian accent can still perform Romeo and Juliet and move the audience emotionally. It is an interesting experiment which just about proves its own moral nicely.