Moop
By H.R.Coursen A LONDON WEEKEND/WGBH/CBC PRODUCTION. Color. 105 minutes. Presented on Masterpiece Theater, PBS (U.S.), January 28, 2002. Produced for LWT by Jo Wright and Michele Buck. Produced for WGBH by Rebecca Eaton, Anne Privcevic, and Julie Gardner. Script by Andrew Davies. Directed by Geoff Saxe. Cinematography by Daf Hobson. Designed by Leigh Walker. Costumes by Les Lansdown. Sound by Maurice Hillier. Edited by Nick Arthurs. With Eamonn Walker (John Othello), Christopher Eccleston (Jago), Keeley Hawes (Dessie), Joss Ackland (James Brabant), Rachel Stirling (Lulu), Richard Coyle (Michael Cass), Bill Paterson (Sinclair Carver), Del Synnott (Alan Roderick), and others. The PBS website for this production expresses the pious hope that students seeing it will return to the original text. If they do, they are likely to conclude, as I have done, that the current effort would have benefited had it been called anything but Othello. A new title does not necessarily enhance a derivative work-witness Jane Smiley's dreary novel A Thousand Acres or, for that matter, the recently released O, featuring a basketball player so diminutive that the rest of the cast is seldom permitted to inhabit the same frame with him. This "yarn" (as the publicity has it) is about an ambitious sub-commissioner of Scotland Yard named Jago who elicits a racist remark from his boss, thus getting the boss canned, only to find a black subordinate jumping into the vacancy because London is seething with racial tension. Jago, then, must get rid of John Othello. In Shakespeare's script, of course, it is Othello who makes the choice of Cassio over Iago, and we should not underestimate, at the outset, the sting of merit spurned or the depth of Iago's personal grievance against the Moor. In the PBS version, Jago, as Othello's executive officer, recommends Michael Cass as bodyguard to Dessie, who is harassed by skinheads. That posting is improbable, but it makes things easy for Jago. Michael cooperates by making a pass at Dessie-gracefully put by-then by spilling wine on his shirt. As Dessie puts the shirt in the sink to soak, Michael dons the golden robe Dessie had given Othello. It had been her "first gift," of course, and has gathered talismanic value unto itself. Othello enters at this moment of apparent post- coital relaxation. Jago suggests that the robe be tested for the fluids of "A, B, and C" and reports positive results to Othello. Later, when it is too late, Jago says that the lab got the results wrong. Lulu, played splendidly by Rachel Stirling, has no role here other than to keep telling Jago that she knows nothing bad about her pal Dessie. Lulu intuits Jago's responsibilty for the tragic loading of the bed, but she says nothing. Jago, who greeted us at the outset by telling us that the story was about "love," tells us the same thing at the end. Now, however, he is the bemedaled commissioner of police. Did he not understand the events he just orchestrated, or is he talking about his own murderous narcissism? We are left to assume that "love" is the lie he is retailing within his world.