Review of the Balagan Theatre’s Othello and Why it Should Never be Performed Again
by Glynnis Kirchmeier
I must begin by admitting that I was biased against liking Othello from the very beginning. When I read the play in my high school English class, I thought that the characters were universally flat – even Iago, whose personality is just clever evil rather than dumb evil. I had no sympathy for Othello’s inner struggle, because I am fundamentally disinclined to give jealous men any sympathy, mostly because their “solution” to feeling jealous is to murder their female partners. Rather than, you know, talking it out. There’s an idea!
I’m also disinclined to like stories about jealous men and their psyches, because their jealousy stems from a belief that a woman’s sexuality is owned by men. And they also believe that a woman’s worth is fundamentally determined by the extent to which she closes her legs. This attitude contrasts with some modern interpretations of sexual jealousy, which place its source more on a breaking of trust; that is a much more legitimate reason to be jealous. Shakespeare’s Othello on the page sources Othello’s jealousy from the women-are-property standpoint, but of course theatre is written to be performed, not read. So I went to Seattle with my housemates, knowing my regard for this play was going to be an uphill battle, but trusting that the Balagan just might get beyond that substantial yet not insurmountable hurdle, that it might prove to me that this play is rich and deep and still a relevant display of genuine human feeling.
It failed.
The tiny Balagan is an intimate blackbox theatre, where of necessity the set must be imagined more than shown. In this type of theatre the relationship between the audience and the actors constantly moves back and forth, and individuals in the audience itself can feed off each others’ reactions. The setup for Othello (which ended December 13) cut the audience into two portions, facing them at each other across the stage. The set consisted of large wood blocks scattered around the stage. Only Iago, played by Mike Dooly, touched these, moving them about as he orchestrated the progression of the play, until the last scenes in which all of the blocks formed Desdemona and Othello’s marriage bed. By the end of the first act, the bed was only partially created, indicating that the result of the play was not inevitable and the course of action was not set. This, though, was contrasted by the acting, which guaranteed the ending almost from Iago’s first treacherous suggestion to Othello.
Before I slam the play too harshly, I should note that it has a lot of good points. Dooly’s Iago was not an incarnation of the devil, nor was he entirely in control of every other character. He was a human being whose own insecurities drove his actions, not his supposed inherent evil. He was likable, even when we descended into the depths of his private thoughts. Iago and his wife Emilia genuinely loved each other, an interpretation I had not picked up when I read the play or saw the last 30 minutes or so of the Samuel L. Jackson version of Othello. This, in turn, made Emilia more likable, since her part in Desdemona’s death was truly an accident born of love and trust. Terri Weagant’s Desdemona herself was a very strong character. She was not some flighty idiot who defied her father out of whim, but a woman who knew the consequences of her actions and had a strong moral compass. She was in tune to the movements of politics and knew her value as a politician in her own right. Actually Weagant had to play against the stupider things that Shakespeare wrote for Desdemona, such as in the following:
Emilia: (reacting to Othello calling Desdemona a whore) I will be hang’d if some eternal villain,
Some busy and insinuating rouge,
Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,
Have not devised this slander; I’ll be hang’d else.
Iago: Fie, there is no such man; it is impossible.
Desdemona: If any such there be, heaven pardon him!
Or at the moment of her death:
Desdemona: A guiltless death I die.
Emilia: O, who hath done this deed?
Desdemona: Nobody; I myself…
Jesus, Shakespeare. She’s forgiving and virtuous. Gag me with a spoon.
To be fair, excepting Johnny Patchamatla as Othello, the actors did a good job of making their characters into whole people. I especially liked the relationship between Cassio and Bianca. Not only was it kinky, but Cassio was a switch. Hot.
But the weakest performance of the play was Patchamatla. Othello, as written, was supposed to be old-ish and somewhat homely. Not so Patchamatla. He was young and delicious, and we all knew it. During his first monologue I watched him look into the eyes of a pretty audience member and fluster her completely. Patchamatla played a good noble Othello, but a poor agonized Othello. Within one conversation, Patchamatla’s Othello is completely taken with the idea of Desdemona’s affair with Cassio. The times he hides and watches innocent conversations are not moments where he is gradually convinced, through manipulation and coincidence, of her guilt. He already knows. It’s a masochistic impulse that makes him watch. With this, of course, Iago’s role as a manipulator is extinguished; Othello has already fabricated the evidence for him. There is no process of doubt; there is only certainty, for it is clear here that a woman who deceived her father to marry a suitor is without morality, e.g. “honesty.” Honesty’s meaning, in Shakespeare’s plays, depends entirely upon the gender of the person with it. Iago has no honesty because he lies and is disloyal; yet Desdemona is honest because she does not have extramarital sex.
And, I am convinced, it is impossible for Othello’s murderous jealousy, by the words of the play itself, to be an expression of broken trust. It must only be an expression of wounded ownership. After Iago first suggests Desdemona’s disloyalty, Othello muses:
…I am abused; and my relief
Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage,
That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad,
And live upon the vapour of a dungeon,
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others’ uses….
So perhaps it is unfair to blame Patchamatla’s performance of Othello exclusively on a lack of skill. True, there is no process of belief, and there’s a lot of unnecessary writhing on the floor, but he cannot change the words of Shakespeare himself to fit modern conceptions of his character’s struggle. Othello thinks of Desdemona as his possession. The only, only reason his murder of her is wrong is because of her innocence. If she were not, the story would still be a tragedy, but the lesson would be “Well, you shouldn’t have gone and married that lying slut anyway.”
The director’s statement asserts that this play is about choice. If so, it is entirely about male choice. Desdemona, Bianca, and Emilia have no efficacy when it comes to how their men treat them. Their offstage – and, therefore, inevitable – choices do move the course of the play. But it is the choices of men to decide whether or not these women continue to breathe, and they are powerless to affect these essential choices.
So what value does Othello have to a modern audience? The reason we still perform Shakespeare is because his plays have something that still moves us, something that still speaks to our human realities despite the difference in time, place, and culture. For its time, Othello was stunning. It had a Moor main character who was good, and a bad white guy (although it wasn’t too surprising, since Iago is a Spanish name and the English of the time considered the Spanish to be rather evil). The stereotype of the raunchy Italian woman was countered. Emilia’s perspective on why a woman might cheat is one of the best I’ve seen by a male author. It is reasoned and sympathetic, and Emilia is still given the privilege of being a virtuous woman.
But these stereotypes relevant are not today. We have moved beyond simple discussions about race; it should not be surprising to us that minorities are not inherently devilish people, nor that white people are sometimes evil. We do not hold women to the same codes of chastity, though we still occasionally kill them for not being chaste. And since that is the case, Othello is not relevant to us today. Othello’s agony is illegitimate. It is illegitimate to kill a woman for her sexual choices – and it is clear to the audience that Desdemona’s death would have been righteous if she were guilty. Thus this play need not continue to be performed. To do so would only legitimize the feelings of people who feel they can abuse their partners. If we should keep Othello around, let it only be taught as a part of our heritage, but no more than that. Do not let it come to life onstage. Any small value in the subplots are overshadowed by the illegitimacy of its central plot. Put on, instead, a Shakespeare play that actually has something worthwhile to say about life today.
Let Othello rot.
December 16th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Thanks for the insightful and thorough review of this production. I agree Desdemona is as flat as a board-though Shakespeare may have had reasons for this… Anyway, I’ll focus on your final conclusion, which seems strange. Should we not read literature or watch plays unless they have a direct bearing on our lives today? Is relevance the final test? One of the reasons I’m in love with literature is that it demonstrates how people lived and viewed the world in a time different than ours. It’s like traveling back in time or studying other cultures. Back then, they had this “Great Chain of Being” idea going on that God was at the top and then kings and then the common man and then the common women and then animals. Now, I don’t agree with this, but it did exist and letting Othello (and all Shakespeare’s plays, which had the same idea, maybe less prominent) rot starts to make people think that others have always thought the way we do now and makes us intolerant to different eras and cultures. Shall we let The Taming of the Shrew rot too, as well as Jane Austen’s novels? Plus, some Middle Eastern women do live in such male-dominated societies, and their plight could be read alongside Desdemona’s. And jealous men do still kill their wives: (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/oct/17/facebook-murder)–over either a loss of trust or a loss of ownership. (I would say Othello’s is a combination of the two.) Basically, this ramble is saying two things: Othello is still “relevant” and even if it were not, we can still read it to get a glimpse of a different, historically-accurate world. I agree that “it is illegitimate to kill a woman for her sexual choices,” and I obviously don’t think people should abuse their partners, but one of the purposes of fiction is to describe the reality of the most base characters. I hope you wouldn’t agree with some Oregon educators–that an Alexie’s new book shouldn’t be taught just because it encourages boys to masturbate? (http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/12/crook_county_removes_book_from.html) “Taught as part of heritage” is rot, because plays can’t be taught unless they come alive on stage.
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Glynnis Kirchmeier Reply:
December 18th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
@Rachel King,
Oh, my. Oregon educators think that boys must be taught to masturbate? They’re a bit out of touch, I think. (HA!) (And just for the record, I firmly support masturbation by any and everyone.)
I think that you are arguing that Othello should be performed as part of our cultural heritage and as a reminder of how things have changed. And it seems that we both agree that there is a difference between experiencing theatre through performance and through reading.
I don’t think Othello should still be performed essentially because I think it legitimizes men murdering women. The primary emotional struggle of the play is Othello’s struggle with his suspicions and jealousy. Iago drives the plot through his master manipulations, but the play is named for Othello because it is his emotion that the audience is supposed to move with. I disagree that Othello’s jealousy has anything to do with a breaking of trust, as I discuss in the article; he is tortured entirely because his possession, Desdemona, may have possibly displayed sexual independence. The implications that a) her death is a natural response to infidelity and that b) if she was in fact unfaithful, she would have deserved to die, are both abhorrent to me.
When the audience views the development of and sympathizes with the protagonists’ feelings as they are supposed to, they legitimize those feelings to some extent. Playwrights sometimes play with this and make people sympathize with feelings that they are uncomfortable with, but Shakespeare’s Othello was meant to tap into the very real and common pain of jealousy.
Since men still kill their partners for the same reasons that Othello killed Desdemona, I don’t think we should say that their feelings are legitimate. Obviously people don’t go out to see one play and then act in crazy ways, but saying Othello is still worthwhile contributes to a culture that condones men’s violence against women. (From what I’ve heard of Taming of the Shrew, it is also trash. Shakespeare’s done better.)
And Shakespeare is not “historically accurate.” It’s art. He made it to make specific artistic/political arguments, not to represent history.
One thing I didn’t get from your comment is why Othello is still relevant. So…why? Because Middle Eastern cultures are regressive? The play’s not set in the Middle East. It’s set in Italy and Cyprus. And I think sexual repression in the Middle East is crap, too. It’s relevant because the actions of base characters are described? I’m not against baseness per se, but there has to be a deeper discussion of the baseness other than “bitch cheated, she’s gotta die.” Iago’s baseness is thoroughly discussed, as well as Cassio’s, Emilia’s, Roderigo’s…but as I said in the post, the value of the subplots are overshadowed by the ideology of the primary plot.
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Rachel King Reply:
December 18th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
@Glynnis Kirchmeier,
You caught me on “historically-accurate.” Othello does have a lot of historical inaccuracies, as do many of Shakespeare’s plays. What I meant by this ill-chosen phrase was simply a different philosophy that basically the whole culture operated in accordance with that “The Great Chain of Being” idea.
Your final argument seems to be that you dislike the main plot of men murdering women–and think its “message” illegitimate–so you think the play shouldn’t be performed, even though it has some decent subplots and characterization. Point taken, though I don’t agree with you, because you’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Someone could study the play from a different angle or just focus on the subplot or characters and be instructed or entertained. I saw a performance of The Taming of the Shrew this summer, and the bantering was hilarious, though I definitely don’t agree with the final conclusion: that marriages will function well if the husband gets the wife to jump at his beck and call. And Jane Austen dissects human psychology better than any 19th century women writer (I’d say any 19th century writer, but I think Dostoevsky’s better), and I won’t stop reading her just because I hate how marriage is the highest ideal for her female characters.
Yes, effective stories make the reader identify with the protagonist but not so the reader will emulate the protagonist, but to either 1) understand motivations or 2) see the reality of a situation. People accused Chekhov of describing too many pessimistic situations without solving them, but Chekhov argued that fiction is about formulating the problems accurately, not solving them. Although the views of the author will naturally show through the fiction, fiction’s aim isn’t to state morals or politics. Art which begins with this end in mind becomes tracts or propaganda. Should Othello turn into a moral, where Shakespeare gives him some condemning mark, like Cain after he killed Abel? That’s not how it happens in real life. Shakespeare created complex art–not straightforward “ideology,” and you’re taking him to seriously to read too much moralizing into his work.
Here’s a personal example: I love so much about Alice Munro’s stories, but I hate her plots which idealize adultery, since I’ve witnessed its disastrous effects. I could say that Alice Munro contributes to this culture in which people already condone adultery and treat it too casually, and thus condemn her stories. Instead, I 1) study the artistic mastery in her scene sequencing and sentences and 2) understand her characters’ life stories and motivations and reality, so that I see life in all its complexity and not look at people in black and white terms. That a women should choose to ditch her husband and kids because she falls in love with some guy on a train is just as abhorrent to me as that a women should deserve to die because of her infidelity is to you–but Munro and Shakespeare do not promote these doings–they are not “messages” or “ideologies” but plots–a huge difference–which illuminate characters and themes.
I would argue the main theme in Othello is appearance vs. reality both in the characters of Desdemona and Iago. Othello’s stupidity ends in a tragedy–a senseless murder–(if Shakespeare were condoning the act–wouldn’t it end as a comedy?), because he lacks judgement. If there were a moral, it could be: don’t be such a trusting idiot! But people could argue many different “main themes.”
And to look at it in another way: I’m a firm believer that plot should be subservient to characters. If a writer has to make characters act against their core personality in order to write her plot, she’s being a dishonest writer, her fictional world’s inaccurate, and her story can easily fall into a moral tale. Now, Shakespeare made Othello domineering and powerful and jealous and possessive and mistrustful of his wife. With these personality traits, what would he have done at the end but killed his wife? How could he have done otherwise, being who he was? I would go so far to say that Shakespeare would have created bad art if he had ended the story differently.
I’m currently reading Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country. The plot focuses around a legendary outlaw and killer in the 1890s Everglades. There wouldn’t be much good art left to read if the protagonist’s actions had to be something I would want popular society to emulate.
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Glynnis Kirchmeier Reply:
December 25th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
@Rachel King,
I suppose we will have to agree to disagree on Othello’s worth. I agree with pretty much everything you are saying about the purpose of fiction (and it would be way annoying if it existed only to present moral lessons), but…still. I think Othello’s virtues can be found elsewhere, and to better effect. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of Truman Capote, for instance, is an excellent exploration of the actions of an Iago-manipulator figure. (It’s film and not theatre, so the comparison isn’t complete, but still.)
But I want to ask another question: why is my conclusion wrong? Given that I clearly have a grasp of both literary and theatrical expression and messaging, and I still rejected Othello as relevant, why is my conclusion wrong? Am I bound to say that I appreciate and value something that I am so disturbed by, merely because it has some artistry to it? Propaganda does also, if it is sometimes more crude in expression. Just because a work of art/literature has been deemed “well done” in some way, is it therefore required to be held in high regard by all?
I think there is no wrong way to read a work of art. Once it has been exposed to the public, there are many valid ways of reacting to it, some of which may not have been intended by the creator. You think that Shakespeare and artists in general do not promote any particular message, but rather explore plots and character development. Well, I think that they do in fact promote some sort of ethical or moral lessons, or at least use ethical concerns as a tool for an audience to react to the work. What would be the point of exploring characters or plots otherwise? (Several absurdist playwrights have indeed written plays with no point, but these I find annoying – which tells me something about who I am and what the art is trying to get at.) Both of our perspectives on this are valid, but irreconcilable vis-a-vis Othello’s worth. I maintain that Othello should rot. It doesn’t give me anything but disgust.
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Chris Van Vechten Reply:
December 18th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
@Rachel King,
#1 “One of the reasons I’m in love with literature is that it demonstrates how people lived and viewed the world in a time different than ours.”
One of the great unspoken pitt-falls of the historian is the belief that by viewing a primary source a modern observer can interpret how a historical figure would have understood the stimuli. One perfect example is the portrayl of industrialization in art during the late 19th century. The modern observer, watching smoke stacks billowing fire into the air, would assume this was how earlier generations rebelled against the society around them – when in fact we now know that such dante like scenes were in fact comforting to a generation of Americans who saw “the natural world” as savage and cruel and therefore preferred the mechanized ordered world the industrial revolution provided.
#2 Yes, we should let Jane Austin’s novels rot.
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Rachel King Reply:
December 19th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
@Chris Van Vechten, You’re right. We can’t completely accurately. But fiction gives a good try.
But your comments are off topic from the important point of contention–ie. Should people not perform Othello because the characters treat women poorly? Glynnis says yes, we should not perform it, this negative ideology already rampant in society shouldn’t be given stage time (plus much more, see article). I say yes, we should perform it, because good fiction is more about characters and a variety of diverse themes than pushing an ideology (plus a lot more–see second comment).
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