Reviews for Little Blue Light: A Play in Three Acts

The average rating for Little Blue Light: A Play in Three Acts based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-02-25 00:00:00 Joy Gibson This is a really interesting adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello because it relocates the action to within Igbo society, and many of the thematic elements seem as grounded in tragic traditions other than Shakespeare. The shift to Nigeria's Igbo culture is important because it pretty much elides the racial aspect of Othello, which is one of the most important portions of Shakespeare's play. Instead, Otaelo is a Osu, an outcast, who is devoted to the gods but isn't considered a legitimate member of society or even fully human. Therefore, the conflict is not between the Moorish Othello and the white Venetians, but between social classes divided by a caste system. The other thing that's striking about this version is how it utilizes central themes that we find in both Greek and West African drama. Shakespeare's Othello has no real discussion of God/gods as driving fate, and it's not explicitly clear that Othello falls because of his hubris, but in Otaelo both of these are prominent elements. Early in the play, Chinyere--the princess, an avatar of Desdemona--is told that a river deity wants her as a priestess, and that if Chinyere doesn't comply she will go mad or die. So there's a prophetic fate that guides the action. And unlike Othello, who never boasts about himself excessively, Otaelo refuses to return to the Osu community with the old man who raised him because, Otaelo claims, he has by his own strength and skill in battle risen even above the position of the king. This hubris is punished when Agbo, one of the king's chief ministers, decides to destroy Otaelo to erase the shame to the kingdom of having an Osu marry the princess.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-08-13 00:00:00 Nicholas Tamburrino An accomplished modernist painter faces the nature of artistry in the postmodernist era. His young assistant questions why he is attracted to this "master" at all, given that the "master" has ceased to produce and is not teaching him anything. A young girl arrives and divides their attention, she is not so much an object of beauty as she is a question mark as to why they are trying to be artists in the first place. An offensive agent has brought them all together in an effort to manipulate a new showing from the old "master." This four person play is a wonderful journey into the nature of beauty, making the reader want to see it in person.