TORONTO - Zaib Shaikh, who plays the affable and occasionally rattled imam on "Little Mosque on the Prairie," was itching to do something darker during a break from shooting the popular CBC comedy late last year.
He found himself pondering a television adaptation of "Othello: The Tragedy of the Moor" with his "Little Mosque" co-star, Carlo Rota, in the title role. Rota, too, was keen to "stretch his wings."
"As a male actor you want to play the edgier side of life and do all that deep stuff," said the Toronto-born Shaikh, who has a lifelong passion for the Bard and started his acting career at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.
"And so this was exactly what Carlo and I were talking about when we said: 'Let's do something that's totally unlike 'Little Mosque."'
Shaikh, 34, adapted the play for television and directed the action.
"Othello" airs Sunday night on CBC following the premiere of the reality show "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" Shaikh giggles at the juxtaposition of a show featuring singing, dancing young women hoping to star in the stage production of "The Sound of Music" and the murderous tale of betrayal, jealousy and racism that plays out in "Othello."
"It's a complementary audience in a way because it's theatrical, but I think it's going to be a little bit of a downer after 'Maria.' It's Father's Day, the dude kills his wife - fun! But the first half is the terribly passionate and romantic and loving Othello, so that's good."
Indeed, both Shaikh and Rota said what they most wanted to do with the character of Othello was to show him to be profoundly in love with his wife, Desdemona, before going off the deep end in a fit of jealousy. And Rota's Othello is indeed enthralled by his wife.
"Iago has always been a pretty fully developed character, but I have never been as satisfied with the character of Othello himself," Shaikh said.
"The traditional way that we've seen Othello played is sort of this stoic, unreachable nobleman. Part of the charm of this production for me is to see this guy who's such a lover and a fighter go mental and go mad with jealousy."
Rota agrees.
"I find it really fascinating how men respond to betrayal," said the actor, who'd never done Shakespeare until "Othello." (Says Shaikh: "I knew he could play Othello before he did.")
"Betrayal is a real kick in the private parts to men, it's totally emasculating, and we just do not know how to deal with it. Othello, obviously, is a perfect example, but we wanted to show how deeply in love he was with Desdemona to have his response make some small amount of sense."
Neither were concerned that Rota wasn't black like other Othellos - as a Moor, Othello is an outsider, and the 47-year-old Rota said that's something he knows all about as an Italian who was raised in England before moving to Canada.
"I can certainly relate to him feeling like he didn't belong, and people treating him like he didn't belong," Rota said, adding he remembers teachers in school speaking slowly and loudly to him in class, as though he was stupid.
"There was certainly an attitude in England in the 1970s that, you know, we love the food, great pasta, but don't you dare try to marry our daughters. So there was a lot about Othello's struggle to be accepted that I completely understood."
For Shaikh, "Othello" was a real labour of love, involving not just his friend, Rota, but Matthew Deslippe, a close pal for years since they acted together at Stratford. Deslippe plays the conniving Iago in the film.
Shaikh marvels at how a production with three male co-executive producers - himself, Rota and Deslippe - was so peaceful.
"That's fodder for things going horribly wrong. You know, everybody's throwing it on the table and seeing who's bigger - but really what ended up happening is that we all had very specific and complementary passions for what we took on," he said.
Still, he can't resist a bit of macho pretence, claiming that there's actually no love lost between him and Rota.
"We hate each other," he says. "He hates me and I hate him, everyone knows that in town, I'm surprised you don't ... I am sure we've been featured fist-fighting in OK (magazine)."
News from �The Canadian Press, 2008
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