“Men are nothing but stomachs and we their food. They eat us until they are full and then they belch us.”
I would like to think that times have changed since the great Bard wrote those words in Othello, but what a wonderfully, descriptive way of putting it.
And what kind of guy sits in the theatre and reads the whole play from a book as it is being performed before his very eyes by some of the country’s best actors? This is what the man behind me was doing, he must have missed so much. However, he still seemed to be enjoying it and was smiling.
I give five stars to the brilliant actors who played the wicked and cunning Iago, I loathed him so much I could have spat in his face and he would merely have sneared, as well as the jealous and unfortunate Rodorigo who had a wonderfully witty and playful stage presence, though doomed to face a tragic end. The rest of the cast get four stars.
Ah, yes, Emilia. Perhaps the guy behind you was a student? Funnily enough, I’ve seen students doing this at the performances of Greek plays in the amphitheatre at Siracusa here. “Othello” was one of the plays I studied for A level [so long ago!] and when we went to see a performance, Frank Finlay was Iago so of course, we all swooned for him and started thinking that maybe Iago wasn’t so bad after all. Drove our poor English teacher to distraction [years later I knew exactly how she felt! ] – “For goodness sake forget it was Frank Finlay!” she screamed.
Iago was Tim McInnerny, who played Lord Percy in Blackadder! And yep – he was absolutely brilliant.
My favourite play, though ocassionally I have felt that the behaviour of some bloggers could be described as “motivelessly malignant” just like Iago. Can still quote chunks of his soliloquies from my o level days . . . even bog standard comps and tech colleges had the great teachers.