MS JULIE GABLER: TRAPPED
by kathleen mary fallon
In this contemporary re-imagining of Othello from the point-of-view of Desdemona three characters play out scenes of love, suspicion, domestic violence and morbid jealousy (the ‘Othello Syndrome’) within an inter-racial context. As they are all professional actors they construct and perform themselves, their lives and relationships trapped within the theatrical contexts of Shakespeare’s Othello; Strindberg’s misogyny and morbid jealousy (in Miss Julie and The Father); Ibsen’s ‘feminism’ (in Hedda Gabler and The Doll’s House). Thus trapped, do they perform themselves within this ubiquitous Western cultural frame or or does it, in fact, perform them?
This searing tragedy of gender, sexuality and race interrogate these questions asking other questions such as:- What really goes on behind closed doors? Why do women stay with partners who behave more and more irrationally, abusively and violently? What are the warning signs that should alert one when ‘normal’ jealousy has turned into psychotic pathology? Moving beyond the simplistic, ineffectual and judgemental slogans – ‘monstrous’, ‘bad’, ‘evil’, ‘patriarchal’, ‘misogynistic’ Ms Julie Gabler: trapped focuses a penetrating spotlight into the cultural dislocation, sexual and psychological torment of the perpetrators of domestic violence whilst, most importantly, highlighting the often unseen escalating risks and the terrible dangers of naivety for the partners and friends.
