Djanet Sears' "Harlem Duet," a 1997 award-winning Canadian drama recently given its New York premiere at the Blue Heron, proves to be an ambitious but flawed play. Taking as its premise "Who would Othello be if he were alive today?," the playwright imagines that before he married Desdemona, Othello was married to a black woman. She then sets the play in three time periods: 1860 on a Southern plantation, 1928 during the Harlem Renaissance, and in contemporary Harlem.
The play is told from the point of view of Billie, the discarded first wife, a role in which Perri Gaffney gave a strong performance. Unfortunately, the historic flashbacks add nothing to the contemporary play, except to make the time scheme more confused. Staging her own play, director Sears did not always make the transitions clear. What was clear is that Othello's abandonment of Billie for a colleague--Mona, a white college professor--leads to Billie's nervous breakdown. More confusing is whether the later scenes are meant to be realistic or hallucinatory.
As the three Othellos, Gregory Simmons demonstrated (when given some Shakespeare in the 1928 segment) how remarkable he could be if given the material. But Othello is mostly asked to stand around apologetically. He does have the play's only revelatory speech, in which he explains that he prefers white women because they don't put any pressure on him.
Although Mona never appears, Billie's estranged father (in a role that seemed out of another story) was interestingly played by Walter Borden, and her sister-in-law shows up briefly, played by Nyjah Moore Westbrooks. The other major role is Billie's landlady, Magi, in which Barbara Barnes Hopkins gave a colorful performance as a Caribbean "Emilia" who has had no luck with men. Allen Booth created the elaborate sound design, which included speeches by black activists and Booth's own original music.
