Iago

C. Bernard Jackson's "Iago," in LATC's Theatre 3, gives a radically revisionistic slant to Shakespeare's "Othello." A revival of the 1979 Inner City Cultural Center production, "Iago" could best be described as a "What If?" play. What if Iago were not a scheming dastard after all, but a much-maligned victim of racism and internecine politics? In Jackson's version, Iago (J.D.

John Neville Canadian actor and stage director John Neville, 86, a British-born Canadian actor and stage director who played the title role in Terry Gilliam's 1988 film "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and had a recurring role in "The X-Files" TV series in the 1990s, died Saturday in Toronto. He had Alzheimer's disease. His death was announced by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada, where he had worked as an artistic director in the 1980s. Neville appeared in dozens of movies, television shows and theater productions during a career that spanned six decades.

Jose Ferrer, amigo, you now rest in peace, but your voice will reverberate forever. Your Iago had no peer. Your Cyrano was the best ever! JULIO L. FRANCESCONI Los Angeles

Iago is notorious not just for making Othello run amok with jealousy. He's also a brazen scene stealer, offering an actor abundant opportunities to eclipse the play's tragically duped protagonist. In the Theatre @ Boston Court's all-female take on "Othello," a co-production with the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company, Iago actually deserves title-character status.

There was one major error of omission in the story "The Land of the One-Legged Man" by Peter S. Goodman (Sept. 22): The present and chronic warring in Cambodia is squarely on the heads of Richard M. Nixon and his foreign policy Iago, Henry Kissinger. Their decision to illegally and secretly bomb Cambodia in 1969 set in motion a line of dominoes that has been falling on the people of that region ever since. TERRY KING Los Angeles

John Neville Canadian actor and stage director John Neville, 86, a British-born Canadian actor and stage director who played the title role in Terry Gilliam's 1988 film "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and had a recurring role in "The X-Files" TV series in the 1990s, died Saturday in Toronto. He had Alzheimer's disease. His death was announced by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada, where he had worked as an artistic director in the 1980s. Neville appeared in dozens of movies, television shows and theater productions during a career that spanned six decades.

Ron Campbell, one of the region's most visible classical actors, is a natural to play Iago. His performance as the grand schemer is the most interesting aspect of an unimaginative "Othello" at Laguna Playhouse. Lithe as a fox, Campbell speaks Shakespearean as if it were his first tongue. When his Iago is with others, his face never betrays his villainy--but when they're not looking, his eyes size up the situation in a single glance.

The burgeoning examination of the musical heritage of colonial Mexico has revealed another fertile period of cross-cultural fusion, as Native Americans were trained in European styles. The bulk of this anthology of short pieces and readings relevant to the revelation of the Virgin of Guadalupe are early 17th century Spanish songs and Latin liturgical pieces by Guatemalan Indian Tomas Pascual.

"Tom and Jerry--The Movie" (citywide) feels like "Tom and Jerry--The Rerun," as every element in the film seems to have been borrowed from some other animated feature. The title duo is taken from the Oscar-winning cartoon series Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera directed at MGM from 1940 to 1958. All that's missing is the polished animation, razor-sharp timing and slapstick humor that made the cat-and-mouse team so popular.

Performed by a 12-member cast on a bare stage, the Cheek by Jowl modern-dress "Othello" focuses all its considerable energies on how eagerly Shakespeare's characters stumble toward disaster. The 14-year-old British company made its local debut on Thursday in the Freud Playhouse as part of the UCLA Live International Theatre Festival, avoiding any suggestion of Venetian pomp or Cypriot atmosphere but resourcefully clarifying the text.

What's right with A Noise Within's "Othello" is what's wrong with this handsome but flawed production of Shakespeare's corrosive tragedy: Geoff Elliott's deliciously loathsome Iago. Closely bearded, lean and mean in black leather, Elliott, who co-directs with Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, is an Iago so assured of his dominance over the pawns in his own psychopathic drama that when he's not dripping venom, he's sputtering with barely contained, explosive glee. It's a blast to watch.

Performed by a 12-member cast on a bare stage, the Cheek by Jowl modern-dress "Othello" focuses all its considerable energies on how eagerly Shakespeare's characters stumble toward disaster. The 14-year-old British company made its local debut on Thursday in the Freud Playhouse as part of the UCLA Live International Theatre Festival, avoiding any suggestion of Venetian pomp or Cypriot atmosphere but resourcefully clarifying the text.

No wonder Othello is so angry. How could he not be, when Shakespeare gave him title billing in a play, then turned around and heaped all the zingy lines, not to mention the laughs, on that weaselly underling Iago? The scheming ensign who topples the great general once again emerged as the audience favorite in free weekend performances of "Othello" by Minneapolis' Guthrie Theater.

The burgeoning examination of the musical heritage of colonial Mexico has revealed another fertile period of cross-cultural fusion, as Native Americans were trained in European styles. The bulk of this anthology of short pieces and readings relevant to the revelation of the Virgin of Guadalupe are early 17th century Spanish songs and Latin liturgical pieces by Guatemalan Indian Tomas Pascual.

Ron Campbell, one of the region's most visible classical actors, is a natural to play Iago. His performance as the grand schemer is the most interesting aspect of an unimaginative "Othello" at Laguna Playhouse. Lithe as a fox, Campbell speaks Shakespearean as if it were his first tongue. When his Iago is with others, his face never betrays his villainy--but when they're not looking, his eyes size up the situation in a single glance.

C. Bernard Jackson's "Iago," in LATC's Theatre 3, gives a radically revisionistic slant to Shakespeare's "Othello." A revival of the 1979 Inner City Cultural Center production, "Iago" could best be described as a "What If?" play. What if Iago were not a scheming dastard after all, but a much-maligned victim of racism and internecine politics? In Jackson's version, Iago (J.D.

He was one of the first Americans to achieve stardom at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. The year was 1925, and baritone Lawrence Tibbett, Bakersfield-born and a singer at the Met since 1923, was appearing as Ford in "Falstaff." The New York Times heralded the response as "quite without precendent," as the audience stamped its feet, and cheered, preventing the show from going on until Tibbett took a solo bow after Ford's jealousy monologue. "This scene," the Times reported, "Mr.

It may be the best investment Walt Disney ever made. Not the mouse who grew to become an American cultural icon, nor the soggy Florida swampland that cost Disney about $185 an acre in 1964 and is now worth more than $1 billion as the home of Walt Disney World. Disney's masterstroke may have been his founding of a private arts college that squats in relative obscurity among the brown, dusty hills of Valencia about 50 miles north of Los Angeles.

The gremlin known as Frustration runs through the Vanguard Theatre Ensemble's production of Shakespeare's "Othello," but in all practicality, there's very little to be done about it. "Othello" itself is frustration on a grand scale, a booming, bloody symphony of miscalculations and missed opportunities. On a lesser scale, director Terry Gunkel's staging also sometimes misses. Jason Grubbe's Iago occasionally seems like a world-weary professional student at Oxford making mischief.

Among the faithful in all disciplines, the most poignant question is always what might have been. What music might Mozart have written if he'd lived, what feats might Ted Williams have managed if world wars hadn't intervened, and what films might Orson Welles have made if he'd ever had enough money to do things his way.