‘Othello’ Theater Review: Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal Bring Star Wattage to Middling Revival Otherwise Short on Electricity
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There’s no denying Denzel Washington’s magnetism. He carries himself with a swaggering authority enhanced by the natural gravitas of his voice. The two-time Oscar winner is the principal reason audiences are shelling out upwards of $900 to see Kenny Leon’s frustratingly underpowered revival of Othello on Broadway. Playing the Venetian general often disparagingly referred to as “the Moor,” Washington emanates the steely charisma of a man who has risen above casual racism by virtue of his military prowess. But there’s little evidence of a driving force behind his performance, which is symptomatic of the production overall.
Staged on a stately set of distressed classical grandeur designed by Derek McLane, this stylish but shallow modern-dress Othello is set in “The Near Future,” as an opening projection informs us. But that’s as close to an overarching concept as Leon gets.
Among the productions strengths is Jake Gyllenhaal’s seething Iago, one of Shakespeare’s greatest villains. Gyllenhaal conveys the hatred and resentment coursing through the minor officer’s veins, but also the petulance after he’s passed over by revered general Othello for promotion to lieutenant. The actor injects notes of ingratiating charm into his character’s evil manipulations, which lends credibility to the number of people easily duped by him, selling the common perception of him as “Honest Iago.”
But the blistering depiction of blinding ambition, treachery and gullibility that should linger like a heavy cloud over the blood and anguish spilled in the final scene feels curiously evanescent here.
When you come out of Othello mostly thinking how impressive the actors playing Cassio and Emilia were, something’s askew in the balance. Those secondary roles acquire vitality and depth of feeling thanks to very fine work by Andrew Burnap and Kimber Elayne Sprawl, respectively. But the insidious scheming by Iago to discredit newly promoted Cassio by poisoning Othello’s thoughts with jealousy too seldom makes sparks fly.
A deserving Tony winner for his shattering work in August Wilson’s Fences, Washington is a great stage actor, as demonstrated repeatedly in his returns to Broadway once or twice a decade.
He was a contemplative Brutus, driven by causes larger than his own in Julius Caesar. In A Raisin in the Sun, he bristled with the restless energy of a man refusing to let go of his elusive dreams. His Hickey in The Iceman Cometh dissected the character’s conflicting sides — from puffed-up showmanship through sanctimonious preachiness to soul-crushing emptiness — with a surgeon’s scalpel.
(He was also a riveting Macbeth, plagued by the doubts of a man caught up in a plot that spins out of his control, in Joel Coen’s 2021 film, The Tragedy of Macbeth.)
Washington’s movie-star presence is undimmable, but in each of those stage productions he was working in the service of a well-balanced ensemble. That’s not always the case here, particularly in the draggy first act, where the actor seems to be phoning it in, as if conserving steam for the climactic scenes in which Othello is so consumed by jealous rage he’s pushed to near-madness and violence.
But the character seldom connects — not with Iago, who exploits his misplaced trust, nor Desdemona, the loving wife framed with false accusations of infidelity. Desdemona is not one of Shakespeare’s strongest female characters, and while London stage regular Molly Osborne gives her the necessary duality of self-possession and vulnerability to counter that, the performance is flat, leaving minimal impression.
Washington does fire up after intermission. As seizures and needling thoughts of betrayal chip away at his sanity, he shows glimpses of what a more fully inhabited performance might have delivered. But the strangulation scene, when Othello is too far beyond reasoning even to listen to his wife’s sincere denials, should be as affecting as it is shocking. He clearly still loves Desdemona despite the lies he’s been fed.
Here and throughout the first press performance, inappropriate laughter suggested that some audience members might be too starstruck to pay attention to the nuances of the play. Othello is a tragedy, after all, so it’s disconcerting to hear chuckling when this victim of Iago’s scheming — filled with grief and remorse yet helpless to stop himself — leans in to plant kisses on his wife’s forehead (“One more, one more … One more, and this the last”) as he kills her.
The staging of that scene is also perplexing, with a gauzy full-stage curtain lowered in front of the bedroom to the lush strains of music right out of a 1950s Hollywood melodrama. Visually, it feels out of sync with the rest of the stark design choices, to say nothing of the techno beats that more often accompany scene changes.
Like Washington, Leon can be an excellent director when he digs deep into a text — the actor and director collaborated with great success on Fences and A Raisin in the Sun. But Leon’s lack of illuminating ideas here is signaled from the start with the gimmicky device of having the handkerchief — an embroidered family heirloom given by Othello to Desdemona and then used by Iago to incriminate Cassio — suspended in mid-air, fluttering off into the wings as the play begins. It’s a showy bit of stage magic when what the production really needs is a discernible perspective.
The director has his actors barrel through scenes, as if pacing alone can generate heat. Key dialogue is treated almost disposably, nowhere more so than in Othello’s “It is the cause, my soul” soliloquy, when Iago’s insinuations have taken root, and the general convinces himself that murdering the alleged adulteress is the just and virtuous thing to do. The avoidance of declamatory pomp is admirable, but too often the actors’ delivery robs the language of its poetry and expressiveness.
Leon leans into the virulent racism in the early scenes, as Iago spits out references to Othello with caustic distaste, knowing that by spilling the secret of the general’s elopement with Desdemona, he can count on the outrage of her senator father (Daniel Pearce). But color-blind casting aside, all that undisguised prejudice seems inconsistent with Iago being married to a Black woman.
Luckily, Sprawl (superb in Girl From the North Country) imbues Iago’s wife, Emilia, with unfaltering presence of mind, keen perception and the sturdiest of backbones, not to mention unquestionable loyalty to Desdemona.
Her scenes are among the production’s high points, as are those of Burnap (a Tony winner for The Inheritance, currently on screens in Snow White), whose Cassio is a righteous man, clearly worthy of the promotion to lieutenant that Iago was denied. From the hazing scene in which he’s forced by Iago and other soldiers to guzzle more booze than he can handle (nice Bud Light product placement) to the botched attempt by another of Iago’s dupes, Roderigo (Anthony Michael Lopez, solid), to murder him, we feel for Cassio in ways that we rarely do for Desdemona or Othello.
Every staging of a classic should stand on its own and not be subjected to comparisons. But I couldn’t help wishing I had been in New York for the last Broadway revival, in 1982, headlined by James Earl Jones, Christopher Plummer and Dianne Wiest.
It was hard also not to wish Broadway audiences could have experienced Sam Gold’s scorching Othello that played downtown in 2016. That production starred Daniel Craig, David Oyelowo and Rachel Brosnahan, and built a binding concept out of its setting in a contemporary military outpost that evoked Iraq or Afghanistan. But such cohesion is sorely lacking here.