David
Melville played Iago as a joker—delighting in manipulating people and causing
them harm. Playing it this way made clear how the story might have provided the
basis of a very silly comedy. There’s nothing in the first half that might not
just as well have been resolved, with Iago’s lies exposed, and everybody
happily reconciled in the end.
But
when Iago really begins tormenting Othello in Act 3 it’s as if a completely
different playwright has taken over. The potentially lighthearted comedy of
misunderstanding is replaced by tragedy of misunderstanding—a vision of a hell
in which words and thought serve only to make reality unreal. The words “think”
and “thought” along with “honesty” clang again and again throughout the play
like a refrain, advertising everything Iago has industriously erased.
Iago
infects everyone with such confusion that, by Act 4, Othello falls into a
trance of incoherent babbling and Desdemona can speak to Emilia only in
fragments. Iago not only undermines society, but undermines language—removing
any possibility of reconciliation. Even at the very end, after he has been exposed, Iago refuses to provide the consolation of an explanation. Why did he do it? "Demand me nothing; what you know, you know."
I
hate to admit it, but the new location in Griffith Park is much roomier and
more comfortable than the old spot. And no helicopters. Though there was an
intermittent chorus of dogs, or were they coyotes?
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