confused but grateful
Last week, the day after Shakespeare's Globe: A Theatrical Experiment arrived from Borders, I got the Globe's production of Othello from Netflix. This is mildly inscrutable, because I emailed the Globe, back when I first learned that they were putting the production on DVD, and they told me that the DVD was only available as a Region 2 DVD. (And later they updated the website to say this, which it still does.) I sighed, hopes dashed, and went about my life, until a few weeks ago when, after I'd added a couple of Shakespeare films I hadn't seen to my Netflix queue, the Globe DVD popped up. And it didn't say anything about regions, and Netflix only delivers in the US, so I went ahead and added it, figuring that if I couldn't view it, I'd just stick it back in the mail. And the DVD came (actually, two DVDs), and it worked just fine, and it says "Made in the USA" on it, so now I'm totally confused.
But anyway. I couldn't watch it until yesterday, because once I'd ascertained that it worked, I knew I had to put it away or I'd get nothing done. I really enjoyed it, though that's not to say that I don't have questions or criticisms. But it's funny: in one way, I'm probably incredibly demanding in my expectations for Shakespeare performances, but in another way, I'm not at all. If they make the verse intelligible and moving, then I'm sold. I don't need fancy staging or elaborate lighting or a high-end concept--just the verse, and the actors--and in fact, that's probably part of why I love the Globe so much, even beyond my love of shiny Renaissance things. When the audience doesn't have all of those extra tools to aid comprehension (or torture the play into some modern semblance, if I'm feeling less charitable and the production's really bad), then the actors have to work that much harder with what little they have. And I love that.
And I love that--despite what some critics might say about the "touristy" or "academic" nature of the place (how those are both true, I can't figure out)--the audience at the Globe is just willing to go along on the ride. They're so quick to laugh, to participate; they're not alienated by the pillars, the clothing, the lack of sets. They just jump in. It's lovely to watch. I've seen four Globe productions--five if you count this DVD--and it's been true every time. I wish I could bottle that willingness and sprinkle some onto my students, somehow.
So. The production itself.
I'm still working out what I think about it, and trying to separate my feelings about it from the problems that I have with the play itself. It isn't a favorite; I find groundless male jealousy really hard sailing. (And Othello's in particular, because he spends all that time denying he has a jealous nature, and because he first defends the thing in Desdemona--"'Tis not to make me jealous / To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, / Is free of speech"--that is ultimately the charge against her.) But in order to make it interesting in this play, that relationship between Othello and Iago needs to come to the fore--that manipulation needs to be palpable--and I didn't *feel* it as much as I would have liked. Part of this is due to Iago, played by Tim McInnerny. (This was only slightly distracting, and only because in the closeups I recognized some of his facial expressions--and that more because of Notting Hill. I can honestly say that I didn't think of Lord Percy once.) Anyway, part of the interest of seeing a production of a play I've only read is that it makes me think about some of the assumptions I have about the characters. My take on Iago has always been that he is smooth, urbane, cool. Detached enough to play on the insecurities of the characters around him without ever getting involved emotionally; even his hatred is a tool once removed, rather than a hot and living feeling. And Tim McInnerny played Iago from the first moment as loud and angry, almost a loose cannon--ready to snap at the idiocy of others at any moment and then having to backtrack as his emotions get away from him; motivated largely by his *own* jealousy, this rumor he has heard that Othello 'has done his office' with his wife Emilia. And it's not like that line isn't there, or that he doesn't mention this at least twice, and Emilia as well--but I guess I'm more of Coleridge's "motiveless malignity" school of thought; Iago provides so many reasons for why he does what he does that I don't know how we can give any of them primacy. But here we see Iago practically *unravel* when he talks about his wife, which I wasn't expecting. And I think it's a shock that I never quite got over.
What this meant, for me, was that it was often hard to see the manipulation as it was happening. I can't put my finger on why that should be--perhaps only that I expected him to take on different parts with different people, and he was the same throughout. Or perhaps that his anger (especially with Roderigo, who was *hilarious* in his prissy self-love) made it hard for me to understand why the other characters would have ever thought he was trustworthy, that he was their good friend. And with Othello particularly, I was expecting Iago to do *something* other than he did--for there to be some kind of purring closeness there, for him to lead Othello to jealousy, and here Othello often seemed to be leading himself. The lines were there (the *one* thing I said to my students that made an impact when I taught the play was when I pointed out to them my sense that Iago almost seems to be *telling* Othello what he feels and creating those emotions just by saying he sees them: "I see this hath a little dashed your spirits," "But I do see you're moved," and Othello responds to these repetitions by moving from "Not a jot" to "not much moved," my emphasis. Which is of course how Iago works on Othello; if he says he saw something--regardless of whether Othello ever sees it, despite his assertion that he will act only on "ocular proof"--then it must be true). But the affect was off, somehow. Perhaps--and here's one moment where the staging could have helped--it's because Iago stayed so far away from Othello for so much of the scene. Othello was playing *himself* into this jealousy, in a little world of his own. And maybe that was the point, but it made Iago, curiously, almost an accessory (in either sense) and not the main actor.
Othello... well, Othello's a hard part. I imagine it must be hard to deliver those lines without the verse becoming heavy. And I'm never sympathetic to Othello on the page, so it would have taken something extraordinary to make me feel so. I should probably think about it more (and maybe rewatch some scenes) before I say anything about Eamonn Walker's performance. What I will say is that there was this one moment, after Desdemona has won Othello's promise to talk to Cassio and exits, that Othello says "Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul / But I do love thee! and when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again" (ow, Shakespeare! that anvil hit me right in the *eye*!). And Eamonn Walker gave this little laugh, as he settled down to business, delighted by Desdemona, by his love for her, and for maybe the first time, my heart broke a little bit, because, oh, this could have been a *love* story. And for maybe five seconds, it was, until Iago spoke. So I'm grateful for that little moment at the least.
Desdemona's (Zoe Tapper) best scene might have been this scene, too; Zoe Tapper did this lovely mock-dismissal when Othello grants his promise, on "Why, this is not a boon," flouncing away and sitting down; and when Othello tried to join her on the bench, scooting away from him a little at the end of the lines, dodging his kisses--"'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves, / Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm..." I can't put it into words, that combination of flirtation and clear affection, and the way her voice fell warm on certain words, but Desdemona came to life very clearly in that scene, and it made me sorry that we get to see so little of that Desdemona in this play. Also, her line reading, at her exit, of "Whate'er you be, I am obedient" pointed out how potentially ironic and odd a thing that is to say at the end of a scene in which she's just wrangled--lovingly, to be sure, but wrangled--him into doing something he really had no interest in doing. A playful moment of "Of course, I'll do anything you want me to do--so long as it's what *I* want you to want me to do." And what's odd about that reading is that all too soon that Desdemona disappears, into one who *is* uncomplainingly, incomprehensibly (to me) obedient, even to the point of death.
The only other person I want to focus on right now is Emilia (Lorraine Burroughs), who was the highlight of the production for me. Listening to her speak the lines was like listening to a friend talk to you--just effortless and playful and lovely when joking about adultery (when Desdemona asks if she would do such a thing "for all the world," Emilia replies, "The world's a huge thing: it is a great price / For a small vice"); spirited and angry when railing against men's treatment of women--and there was something in the way she said, "Why, the wrong [of adultery] is but a wrong i'th' world, and having the world for your labor, 'tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it right" just...did something. Here are these two women in this scene who don't have much recourse to any world beyond that of their husbands, and the imagined possibility of their having the whole world, to change the rules of it--well, I'd never imagined it before, which was what was so lovely about the way she delivered the lines. The only thing is that I would have loved it if Desdemona had reached out to comfort Emilia at the end of her speech ("Then let them use us well"), because it's so clear that she's talking about her own marriage here as well as Desdemona's; but instead, rattled by this speech, Desdemona dismisses Emilia rather abruptly, though softening it with the repetition of "good night." Again, in tragedy, the moments of real, possible playfulness are so small--yes, there's a clown in Othello, in Macbeth; yes, there's the clownish banter that upset eighteenth-century critics (and those of later eras) because it was "out of place" for a tragedy, Shakespeare's "fatal Cleopatra" his inability to ignore a quibble; and yes, the tragedies are frequently funny. But the space of actually imagining other possibilities, as Celia does in AYLI when she says that she and Rosalind should "mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel," is so painfully circumscribed.
But anyway. I couldn't watch it until yesterday, because once I'd ascertained that it worked, I knew I had to put it away or I'd get nothing done. I really enjoyed it, though that's not to say that I don't have questions or criticisms. But it's funny: in one way, I'm probably incredibly demanding in my expectations for Shakespeare performances, but in another way, I'm not at all. If they make the verse intelligible and moving, then I'm sold. I don't need fancy staging or elaborate lighting or a high-end concept--just the verse, and the actors--and in fact, that's probably part of why I love the Globe so much, even beyond my love of shiny Renaissance things. When the audience doesn't have all of those extra tools to aid comprehension (or torture the play into some modern semblance, if I'm feeling less charitable and the production's really bad), then the actors have to work that much harder with what little they have. And I love that.
And I love that--despite what some critics might say about the "touristy" or "academic" nature of the place (how those are both true, I can't figure out)--the audience at the Globe is just willing to go along on the ride. They're so quick to laugh, to participate; they're not alienated by the pillars, the clothing, the lack of sets. They just jump in. It's lovely to watch. I've seen four Globe productions--five if you count this DVD--and it's been true every time. I wish I could bottle that willingness and sprinkle some onto my students, somehow.
So. The production itself.
I'm still working out what I think about it, and trying to separate my feelings about it from the problems that I have with the play itself. It isn't a favorite; I find groundless male jealousy really hard sailing. (And Othello's in particular, because he spends all that time denying he has a jealous nature, and because he first defends the thing in Desdemona--"'Tis not to make me jealous / To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, / Is free of speech"--that is ultimately the charge against her.) But in order to make it interesting in this play, that relationship between Othello and Iago needs to come to the fore--that manipulation needs to be palpable--and I didn't *feel* it as much as I would have liked. Part of this is due to Iago, played by Tim McInnerny. (This was only slightly distracting, and only because in the closeups I recognized some of his facial expressions--and that more because of Notting Hill. I can honestly say that I didn't think of Lord Percy once.) Anyway, part of the interest of seeing a production of a play I've only read is that it makes me think about some of the assumptions I have about the characters. My take on Iago has always been that he is smooth, urbane, cool. Detached enough to play on the insecurities of the characters around him without ever getting involved emotionally; even his hatred is a tool once removed, rather than a hot and living feeling. And Tim McInnerny played Iago from the first moment as loud and angry, almost a loose cannon--ready to snap at the idiocy of others at any moment and then having to backtrack as his emotions get away from him; motivated largely by his *own* jealousy, this rumor he has heard that Othello 'has done his office' with his wife Emilia. And it's not like that line isn't there, or that he doesn't mention this at least twice, and Emilia as well--but I guess I'm more of Coleridge's "motiveless malignity" school of thought; Iago provides so many reasons for why he does what he does that I don't know how we can give any of them primacy. But here we see Iago practically *unravel* when he talks about his wife, which I wasn't expecting. And I think it's a shock that I never quite got over.
What this meant, for me, was that it was often hard to see the manipulation as it was happening. I can't put my finger on why that should be--perhaps only that I expected him to take on different parts with different people, and he was the same throughout. Or perhaps that his anger (especially with Roderigo, who was *hilarious* in his prissy self-love) made it hard for me to understand why the other characters would have ever thought he was trustworthy, that he was their good friend. And with Othello particularly, I was expecting Iago to do *something* other than he did--for there to be some kind of purring closeness there, for him to lead Othello to jealousy, and here Othello often seemed to be leading himself. The lines were there (the *one* thing I said to my students that made an impact when I taught the play was when I pointed out to them my sense that Iago almost seems to be *telling* Othello what he feels and creating those emotions just by saying he sees them: "I see this hath a little dashed your spirits," "But I do see you're moved," and Othello responds to these repetitions by moving from "Not a jot" to "not much moved," my emphasis. Which is of course how Iago works on Othello; if he says he saw something--regardless of whether Othello ever sees it, despite his assertion that he will act only on "ocular proof"--then it must be true). But the affect was off, somehow. Perhaps--and here's one moment where the staging could have helped--it's because Iago stayed so far away from Othello for so much of the scene. Othello was playing *himself* into this jealousy, in a little world of his own. And maybe that was the point, but it made Iago, curiously, almost an accessory (in either sense) and not the main actor.
Othello... well, Othello's a hard part. I imagine it must be hard to deliver those lines without the verse becoming heavy. And I'm never sympathetic to Othello on the page, so it would have taken something extraordinary to make me feel so. I should probably think about it more (and maybe rewatch some scenes) before I say anything about Eamonn Walker's performance. What I will say is that there was this one moment, after Desdemona has won Othello's promise to talk to Cassio and exits, that Othello says "Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul / But I do love thee! and when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again" (ow, Shakespeare! that anvil hit me right in the *eye*!). And Eamonn Walker gave this little laugh, as he settled down to business, delighted by Desdemona, by his love for her, and for maybe the first time, my heart broke a little bit, because, oh, this could have been a *love* story. And for maybe five seconds, it was, until Iago spoke. So I'm grateful for that little moment at the least.
Desdemona's (Zoe Tapper) best scene might have been this scene, too; Zoe Tapper did this lovely mock-dismissal when Othello grants his promise, on "Why, this is not a boon," flouncing away and sitting down; and when Othello tried to join her on the bench, scooting away from him a little at the end of the lines, dodging his kisses--"'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves, / Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm..." I can't put it into words, that combination of flirtation and clear affection, and the way her voice fell warm on certain words, but Desdemona came to life very clearly in that scene, and it made me sorry that we get to see so little of that Desdemona in this play. Also, her line reading, at her exit, of "Whate'er you be, I am obedient" pointed out how potentially ironic and odd a thing that is to say at the end of a scene in which she's just wrangled--lovingly, to be sure, but wrangled--him into doing something he really had no interest in doing. A playful moment of "Of course, I'll do anything you want me to do--so long as it's what *I* want you to want me to do." And what's odd about that reading is that all too soon that Desdemona disappears, into one who *is* uncomplainingly, incomprehensibly (to me) obedient, even to the point of death.
The only other person I want to focus on right now is Emilia (Lorraine Burroughs), who was the highlight of the production for me. Listening to her speak the lines was like listening to a friend talk to you--just effortless and playful and lovely when joking about adultery (when Desdemona asks if she would do such a thing "for all the world," Emilia replies, "The world's a huge thing: it is a great price / For a small vice"); spirited and angry when railing against men's treatment of women--and there was something in the way she said, "Why, the wrong [of adultery] is but a wrong i'th' world, and having the world for your labor, 'tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it right" just...did something. Here are these two women in this scene who don't have much recourse to any world beyond that of their husbands, and the imagined possibility of their having the whole world, to change the rules of it--well, I'd never imagined it before, which was what was so lovely about the way she delivered the lines. The only thing is that I would have loved it if Desdemona had reached out to comfort Emilia at the end of her speech ("Then let them use us well"), because it's so clear that she's talking about her own marriage here as well as Desdemona's; but instead, rattled by this speech, Desdemona dismisses Emilia rather abruptly, though softening it with the repetition of "good night." Again, in tragedy, the moments of real, possible playfulness are so small--yes, there's a clown in Othello, in Macbeth; yes, there's the clownish banter that upset eighteenth-century critics (and those of later eras) because it was "out of place" for a tragedy, Shakespeare's "fatal Cleopatra" his inability to ignore a quibble; and yes, the tragedies are frequently funny. But the space of actually imagining other possibilities, as Celia does in AYLI when she says that she and Rosalind should "mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel," is so painfully circumscribed.