If Othello is a tragedy, the new Othello on Broadway—starring Denzel Washington as Othello, Jake Gyllenhaal as Iago, with tickets going for around a thousand dollars; y’know, that one—didn’t get the memo. This is Othello made easy-breezy, bright and slick, without much to say, tragic or otherwise.
Instead of insightful interpretation—or even the pleasure of watching the dual and dueling star power of Washington and Gyllenhaal up close on stage—this is a bizarrely underpowered production that rarely rises to compelling drama. When it does it’s thanks to Gyllenhaal, and co-stars Kimber Elayne Sprawl (as Emelia, Iago’s wife) and Andrew Burnap (Cassio, Othello’s lieutenant).
The first head-scratcher: Where are we, and why are we there? The production, directed by Kenny Leon, features a mostly bare stage with ugly classical columns, and an occasional electronic plinth rising up center stage when someone needs a desk or bed. (The cheap-looking pillars reminded me of the ones used in the school theater production of Agamemnon in Scream 2 that crash around Laurie Metcalf in that film’s denouement.)
Given the lack of electronic plinths in Shakespearean England, you would be right to assume that this production—which has already broken the record for the top-grossing play in Broadway history—is set in “the near future” as an opening projected caption makes clear.
Leon told Broadway.com that he imagined it being October 2028, “because whatever the political climate was, I didn’t want it to be that. But I didn’t want to be so far ahead that it felt like, ‘Oh, that’s so far ahead. That’s not me.’”
On stage this translates to something too indistinct as both setting and time; a modern setting that means nothing apart from its own stunt window dressing. The costume is similarly blah: modern US army fatigues and then, in confected boardroom situations when someone wants to roll a map out, skinny black suits and ties for the men and sober trouser suits and casual-wear for the women.
First, Othello must defend himself against charges he has poisoned or coerced Desdemona (Molly Osborne, dressed in innocence-proclaiming white) into marrying him. He is the first to label his persecutor “Honest Iago” as the villain (who is anything but) comes to be known, repetitively, by all around.
The production progresses dutifully rather than electrifyingly, with a puzzling and defeating lack of chemistry among its principals who seem the stiffest of scene partners. While Washington makes Othello’s all-consuming love for Desdemona clear in mannerisms, on stage together he and Osborne are brisk and business-like.
The other central relationship, the fulcrum of the play, is the relationship of Othello and Iago, and Washington and Gyllenhaal not only lack a complementary or competing set of chemistries, they seem to be pursuing two off-kilter routes through their characters’ play-journeys.
If you’ve seen other productions of Othello, you know there are many choices and interpretations around the men’s relationship. Does Iago decide to undermine and persecute Othello, and rip his relationship to wife Desdemona to pieces, because he is a racist and resents taking orders from the “Moor”? Is he jealous? Why Iago hates, what drives him, is one of the most discussed and contested mysteries in the history of theater.
Here, Gyllenhaal, in blue casual jacket, grey slacks, and black T-shirt, seems to be doing it just because he can: the most chilling of motives that he relays direct to the audience. “So will I turn her virtue into pitch,/And out of her own goodness make the net/That shall enmesh them all,” he says of his reputation-sullying plan to destroy Othello and Desdemona’s relationship.
The play exposes its characters early on, though everyone ignores the on-page warning signs. Iago says to Roderigo (a very good Anthony Michael Lopez, as gulled by him as everyone else): “We cannot all be masters, nor all masters/Cannot be truly followed.” Even though he doesn’t know it, or mean it that strongly, Desdemona’s father Brabantio (Daniel Pearce) says early to Iago: “Thou art a villain.”
Gyllenhaal’s Iago purveys a sleek strategic nastiness, and the whiff of modern-day incel (he is the only character on stage made believably modern). His on-stage addresses outlining his next evil scheme are so effectively done, our audience sighed with outrage over each new calumny.
“What’s he, then, that says I play the villain,/When this advice is free I give and honest,” Iago asks us, to our collective snorts—but he really believes it, or has made himself believe this is all a game of winner-takes-all human chess.
Washington doesn’t give an outright bad performance, but seems too blithe, almost jovially scattered, throughout; there is no sense of Othello’s blind spots, or of him being ensnared, or of his mental and moral descent as the effects of Iago’s scheming take hold.
However, some of his line delivery is excellent (“Think, my lord?” he mimics Iago back to him), especially when spitting forth Shakespeare’s most venomous zingers as Iago’s schemes begin to bear fruit, such as “Thou art on thy deathbed,” the chilling line Othello says to Desdemona before killing her.
Burnap as Cassio and Sprawl as Emilia imaginatively fill out their subsidiary roles. “My reputation, Iago, my reputation!” Cassio says to Iago, whose manipulations are shredding the same.
“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser,” Iago replies savagely.
Emilia rightly identifies jealousy as “a monster/Begot upon itself, born on itself,” before knowing her husband is responsible for all its generation on stage. His blatant evil (to us, the audience) carries its own consistent pantomime humor. Next to him, Emilia mulls that she “will be hanged if some eternal villain,/Some busy and insinuating rogue,/Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,/Have not devised this slander. I will be/hanged else.”
“Fie, there is no such man,” Iago says, knowing he is just that man. “It is impossible.”
Sprawl gives Emilia’s final revelation of all Iago’s plans and despicable nature a particularly visceral force, before Iago kills her and we careen through the play’s speedy ending and Othello’s self-inflicted death. Why, Othello asks of a now-slain Iago—“that demi-devil”—had he “thus ensnared my mind and body?”
That’s the question; and Iago’s famed response—“Demand me nothing. What you know, you know./ From this time forth I never will speak word”—has ensured hundreds of years of supposition.
Like much in this production, the presentation of the final scene feels rushed and ill-conceived. This is not a terrible production of Othello, but even a workmanlike rendering of a classic Shakespearean play needs a blueprint for itself, a setting that makes sense, a distinctive reason to be—and a cast collectively making coherent sense of its conception. The real tragedy of this Othello may be reserved for those who spend a thousand dollars to see it.
