A new production of Othello opens this month at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. The play swings from political intrigue to tight domestic drama, telling a tale of jealousy and exploring the way in which an individual can be manipulated towards destruction. Will Keen, who is playing Iago - Othello’s officer, and a man intent on orchestrating the title character’s downfall - recently spoke to What’s On about the power of a great Shakespearean tragedy...

Can you give us a brief outline of the story of Othello, Will…
I'll try to spoil as little as possible… Othello is a Moorish general in Venice, a very distinguished fighter and statesman, and he falls in love with a young woman called Desdemona. Meanwhile, one of his ‘ancients’ [his standard-bearer, Iago] wishes he had been promoted to a better position. For various reasons of jealousy, Iago decides to create a plot which will frame the person who's been put in the position of authority that he wishes he could have, and destroy Othello’s marriage. 
It’s really a story about how you manage to infect a mind with jealousy, and what the effects of jealousy are. How, once that seed has been planted in your head, it can become so overpowering that it matters more to be proved right in your suspicion - for your ego to be proved right - than for the thing actually to be true, even to the cost of your own destruction.

Tell us about Iago, the character you’re playing… 
Well, it’s difficult to say a take really, because I'm still getting to know him, and I don't want to become too prejudicial. I would say that, as far as I can make out, he is somebody who feels that the universe has betrayed him in some way. The form of that betrayal is partly to do with his belief that his wife has cheated on him, and is partly to do with a very deep spiritual sense of betrayal, which I think is a sort of theological despair. I think that Othello is almost a god-like figure, and Iago feels a bit like Lucifer - like God has turned away from him.
 
In terms of developing your own interpretation of the character, what is your starting-point and what are your influences? 
Well the director is Tim Carroll, who I've worked with several times in the distant past. I've always loved his playfulness as a director. What we’re doing is a lot of games around the verse - it's actually incredibly rich language. You're given a huge amount of options as an actor, and in a way, one's job is to try and keep as many options open for as long as possible - not to be shutting things off. It's a judicious job deciding when and where you take decisions and where it's possible not to take decisions. The starting point, I suppose, is being as irreverent and as respectful as possible, in terms of the preconceptions that we have for the play and the characters. 

How well do you know the play - have you ever performed in Othello before? 
This is my first time. I do know it quite well, just because it's a play that I’ve always loved and have read several times throughout my life. The amazing thing about these huge plays is how they seem to transform themselves according to your life experience. They become different animals. When you meet them at different moments in your life, they mean completely different things to you. 

Is there anything about the production that you feel will make it refreshingly different from a ‘standard’ version of Othello?
Well, I think the way Tim approaches text is fantastically rigorous and fantastically releasing. It really does listen to the heart of the play, without having any kind of prejudices about what it represents - what it has represented culturally, what it represents culturally [now]. It's a very pure way of listening to the play, which just allows it to reverberate in the audience's mind. The audience draws their conclusions. Of course, what's so brilliant about Shakespeare, like all great writers, is that he's not providing any answers - he's only putting questions out there. I think Tim is very good at revealing the questions.

Where does the play stand in comparison with Shakespeare’s other tragedies? 
I'd put them all equal first, really - it's one of the great plays of world literature, without any shadow of a doubt. It's an astonishingly tight domestic drama. It feels like a very modern psychological drama. It's amazingly imaginative, it’s incredibly rich, but it's different. If Macbeth is a play of the imagination, this is a play of the mind. 

If you could choose one Shakespearian character to play who you haven’t already played, who would it be and why?  
I think probably, if I could only play one other Shakespeare character in my life, it would be King Lear, which I think is as complete and terrifying an account of the experience of humanity and approaching death as I can imagine. 

What would you like an audience member who’s new to Shakespeare to take away from watching this latest version of Othello? 
I would always want them to feel that they had been spoken to intimately about their own lives, and their own responsibilities, and their own treatment of other people - their treatment of themselves and other people. I think that this play talks about that as well as any other piece of literature I've ever come across.  

You’re making a return to the RSC to play Iago - what do you think makes the RSC special and different, other than its obvious world-renowned status in terms of the works of Shakespeare? 
I'm semi-returning. It was a co-production I did before, between the Lyric Hammersmith and the RSC. I've never done a full, pure RSC production - so in that sense, I'm a debutant! I'm thrilled, of course. I'm absolutely delighted, very honoured and privileged.
I think there's a wonderful thing about leaving London and playing in a space which is dedicated to a particular imaginative universe - the imaginative universe of Shakespeare. And being surrounded by the countryside which inspired that imagination. I think that, obviously, the RSC has an amazing history of people who started it up and have worked for it over the years. It's lovely to feel a part of a continuing tradition. There aren't many playwrights who deserve to have a company made in their honour, but Shakespeare certainly does.  

Feature by Jessica Clixby

Othello shows at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon from Friday 11 October until Saturday 23 November