BLOG/RELIEF: ARE YOUR DOORS LOCKED? David Wagner, alias the Ninomaniac, gave to the Red Cross and requested a post about Iago. This was timely, as I recently saw the taut, utterly fun Shakespeare Theatre production of “Othello.” It’s showing now and you should go see it!!!! The actors are at the top of their game; the director is the amazing Michael Kahn; the show evokes a wartime, cultural-mixing atmosphere swiftly and believably, using the cultural specificity of Venice and its wars to add to the production’s power rather than distracting the audience; the show maintains its suspense even though we know exactly what will happen. When I saw it, those in the audience were visibly on the edge of our seats.

So perhaps talking about this production’s Iago–Patrick Page–will allow me to wind slowly into my subject like a snake. I was worried at first: None of the moments that define Iago, for me, were underlined. (This post’s title, for example.) There seemed an over-credulous emphasis on Iago’s various undermotivations–his thwarted ambition, his fear that Othello had cuckolded him. There were some fun bits–Othello comes across as much more of a salesman or politician than usual, his playing on Desdemona’s emotions (girls love hurt/comfort narratives!) nicely paralleled with Iago’s machinations–but I worried that we would get an Iago reduced to comprehensibility. Fortunately, as the play rolled on, the sociopathy began to show: a barely-human, racking laugh; an affectlessness that only snapped into appropriate emotion when someone was watching. Any Iago has to keep the character’s ending in mind: that ferocious denial of intelligibility, “Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:/From this time forth I never will speak word.” Patrick Page earned that line, and slammed it home.

Because Iago is the unintelligibility of motive; specifically, the unintelligibility of evil. He is the disconnection between our professed motives and the evil actions we take. He’s the place where your eyes don’t go. For him to make sense as a character, we need a visceral sense of the distance between our motives and our actions; we need a visceral sense of, “But that’s not good enough!“

Every day we do terrible things for reasons that aren’t good enough. This is especially evident from a theological perspective: You gossiped, or slept around, or stole, or lied, even though it’s against God? I don’t care what your reasons are, they’re not good enough! Even from a temporal perspective, it’s so easy to see how often we give up some immensely important and good thing for a small, cruel pleasure.

We have reasons–but the reasons aren’t enough, and at the end of the day, I suspect the reasons don’t really matter. What matters is, Do you love God, or not? If you do, if you try to, no reasons for wrong actions will even appear to be worth it. If you don’t, as I think most of us don’t most of the time, even the pettiest reason for wrong actions will be enough. You’ll find an excuse for your favorite, cherished wrong. (I guess it should be obvious that the same person can choose for or against God several times a day, in the doubletongued and guilty way we do.)

Iago isn’t about his reasons. But then again… really, neither are we.

Are your doors locked?