Iago (not the parrot)

[tealin]

I made a point, a little over a year ago, that I was not a 'villains' person, or at least did not think of myself as such until very recently. This is, for the most part, true. But there was one, many years ago, who stood out as appealing in some indiscernible way, and who I'd all but forgotten about until last week.

What's funny is that it wasn't even in the proper play that I was struck by Iago – when I was in high school my mom took me to a production of Good Night, Desdemona (Good Morning, Juliet), a metafictional sort of Thursday Next play-hopping type play about a Shakespeare scholar who ends up inserted into the plays for some reason. Iago doesn't really have that big of a role, in fact, but more than a decade later he's nearly all I can remember.* That fact, and my interest in him at all in the first place, I thought was down to the actor: he had a very distinctive look and played the part with such twisted glee it was hard not to get on his side. But last week, Radio 4 aired a production of Othello, originally put on by Northern Broadsides Theatre Company, which was awesome, and Iago was fantastic in that as well. So there must be something to it...

Anyway, I drew this as a tribute to 'my' Iago ... various internet searches have not uncovered who he was, alas, and he ended up looking like Lupin's evil brother as played by John Simm (who would make a great Iago, by the way). Fun, though! Here's to twisted conniving bastards. [raises glass] As long as they don't go after me.

*aside from the part where the scholar starts talking impromptu iambic pentameter, which was great