Film Stars Twinkle on the Great White Way, Part 1

 

[Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello, written around 1603-04, opened in its latest Broadway revival with Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on 23 March. It started previews on 24 February and is scheduled to close its limited run on 8 June.  The two-act performance runs 2 hours 40 minutes and the production is set “in the near future.”

[The production is directed by Kenny Leon, a Tony-winner for direction of A Raisin in the Sun (2014) and a Drama Desk-winner for Some Like It Hot (2023).  Scenery was designed by Derek McLane, the costumes by Dede Ayite, the lighting by Natasha Katz, and the sound by Justin Ellington.  The fight direction is by Thomas Schall.

[In addition to Washington as Othello and Gyllenhaal as Iago, the cast includes Molly Osborne in her Broadway début as Desdemona, Othello’s wife.  Andrew Burnap is Cassio, Othello’s loyal captain; Julee Cerda is Bianca, Cassio’s lover; Daniel Pearce is Brabantio, Desdemona’s father; and Kimber Elayne Sprawl is Emilia, Iago’s wife and Desdemona’s maid.

[Despite the limited engagement, the scuttlebutt is that there are seats available for the entire run.  Center orchestra tickets are selling for $921; however, there are $49 student rush tickets available for every performance at the Barrymore Theatre box office with a valid student ID, limited to one ticket per person and a limited number of $49 tickets are also available through a digital lottery at Telecharge Lottery + Rush Tickets.] 

“DENZEL WASHINGTON, JAKE GYLLENHAAL
RETURNING TO BROADWAY IN ‘OTHELLO’”
by Katie Houlis

[This advanced report of the revival aired on CBS News New York (WCBS, Channel 2, New York City) on 6 March 2024.]

NEW YORK – Actors Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal are returning to Broadway in an upcoming revival of William Shakespeare’s [1564-1616] classic play “Othello.”

Washington will star in the title role, with Gyllenhaal portraying Iago. Additional casting has not yet been announced.

The production, directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon, will open in spring 2025.

Washington was last seen on Broadway in the 2018 production of [Eugene O'Neill’s (1888-1953)] “The Iceman Cometh” [1939; 26 April-1 July 2018], for which he received a Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Play. He previously won the Tony for Best Actor in a Play for the 2010 revival of “Fences” [26 April-11 July].

Gyllenhaal was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 2019 for his performance in “Sea Wall/A Life.” 

[This was a mounting on 8 August-29 September 2019 of two solo one-act dramas; Sea Wall was written by Simon Stephens and performed by Tom Sturridge; A Life was written by Nick Payne and performed by Gyllenhaal. Both actors were nominated for 2020 best-actor Tonys.]

Tickets for “Othello” will go on sale at a later date.

“Othello” was last performed on Broadway in 1982, starring James Earl Jones in the title role, Christopher Plummer as Iago and Dianne Wiest as Desdemona.

[Katie Houlis is a digital producer with the CBS New York web team.  She started her career as an intern with the Pittsburgh CW Green Team and the CBS Pittsburgh web team.  She later joined CBS Pittsburgh as a full-time web producer.  Houlis has also written for Tell-Tale TV, an entertainment news website.]

*  *  *  *
“BROADWAY SEEING STARS FOR OPENING NIGHT OF ‘OTHELLO’
STARRING DENZEL WASHINGTON AND JAKE GYLLENHAAL”
by Joelle Garguilo

[This Eyewitness News report was broadcast on WABC (Channel 7, New York City) on 24 March 2025, the evening after opening night.]

NEW YORK (WABC) – Broadway was seeing stars on Sunday night [23 March] for the opening of ‘Othello.’ [There is a post on another production of Othello in “Some Out-Of-Town Plays from the Archive” (22 December 2020), a Washington, D.C., staging with Avery Brooks as the Moor and the late Andre Braugher as Iago.]

Othello is one of William Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies, and it has not been on Broadway since 1982. [I have a three-part post as a tribute to James Earl Jones, who played Othello in that 1982 staging, entitled “In Memoriam: James Earl Jones (1931-2024)” (22, 25, and 28 September 2024).]

The revival, starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, is set in the near future. It is getting a fresh take thanks to director, Kenny Leon.

“I think Denzel has given his whole self on the stage eight shows a week. He doesn’t have to do that other than he wants to impact lives – his Othello is going on that spiritual journey. It’s just a real special production,” Leon said.

Molly Osborne plays Desdemona.

“It has been a dream working for this company. I hope audiences come and they see something new and fresh even though it’s a 400-year-old play,” Osborne said.

Jamie Lee Curtis [2023 Oscar-winner as Best Supporting Actress for Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022); she and Gyllenhaal have appeared in several films together over the years] was at the opening and said it was thrilling to watch Gyllenhaal’s performance.

“To know someone since they were five and watch them become an artist – to be able to watch Jake tonight to take on one of the most challenging roles is just thrilling,” she said.

It was a historic evening.

“Just appreciative that I get to be a part of history. This is a historic evening. Break legs all over the place – it’s gonna be amazing,” said Rosie Perez.

Othello has already broken records as the highest-grossing play in Broadway history. [The production has amassed $2.8 million from eight previews leading up to the official 23 March première. This surpasses the $2.7 million set by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in December 2023.]

It only runs through the first week in June, so those wanting to go are encouraged to get tickets immediately.

[Joelle Garguilo is an Emmy Award-winning entertainment reporter for WABC.  A native New Yorker, she began her career in broadcast television 15 years ago at NBC, interviewing hundreds of stars on the screen and stage including Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Timothee Chalamet, Julia Roberts, Tony Bennett, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, among others.

[Throughout her tenure, she held multiple roles across the network. Most recently, she worked as an on-air entertainment and features reporter for New York Live, correspondent for E! News while contributing at the Today Show with Hoda & Jenna.

[Garguilo’s talents have earned her two Emmy Awards, one for the magazine program New York Live Home for the Holidays and a second for Outstanding Entertainment: Program Features/Segment for New York Live Features/Segments.]

*  *  *  *
“DENZEL WASHINGTON AND JAKE GYLLENHAAL
POWER “OTHELLO” TO ELECTRIC OPENING NIGHT ON BROADWAY”
by Dave Carlin 

[This report aired on CBS News New York (WCBS, Channel 2, New York City), also on 24 March 2025.]

Sunday [the 23rd] was opening night on Broadway for two of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal are taking on the new production of Shakespeare’s “Othello.”

The red carpet was full of VIPs, including Jennifer Lopez, Samuel L. Jackson, Anna Wintour, Colman Domingo and many more. And entertainers weren’t the only ones in attendance. Former President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, were also seen entering the Barrymore Theatre.

Washington plays the conflicted and murderous title character. His jealousy and violence is carefully orchestrated by his backstabbing confidante Iago, played by Gyllenhaal.

Prior to the show, members of the cast explained how horrors and thrills created by Shakespeare now land with a freshness in a modern setting.

“They’ve treated this like a new play,” said Andrew Burnap, who plays “Cassio.”

“I’m excited to share,” said Kimber Elayne Sprawl, who portrays “Emilia.”

“Even if you know it, seeing it happen right in front of you, the conflict that happens in the play, it’s just so human that it will always need to tell the story,” said Molly Osborne, who plays “Desdemona.”

Othello’s director is Tony Award winner Kenny Leon.

“Denzel is an emperor. He’s an emperor of the American stage, of the world stage. He has met this role head on and Jake has met Denzel head on,” Leon said.

In February, while Othello was in rehearsals, CBS News New York sat down with Washington and Gyllenhaal [this is a video; there’s no transcript that I can find]. Both described their roles as exciting, and for each star a dream come true.

“We are given the freedom to break the rules,” Washington said.

“I spent the past eight months really digging in because I’ve never done Shakespeare,” Gyllenhaal added.

Producer Brian Moreland [winner of the 2023 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play for The Piano Lesson; nominated for four Best Play or Best Revival Tonys] said a sizzling Shakespeare is what they were after and he credits the unbeatable cast and creators.

“It’s that good and they’re that good. Night after night they build that same journey, so that you get to the point that we all know is going to happen, it’s all inevitable, but yet you’re there with them on every single word they have to say,” Moreland said.

To call Othello, which runs through June 8, a financial hit is an understatement as it is expected to earn the title of highest grossing Broadway play ever.

*  *  *  *
“DENZEL WASHINGTON AND JAKE GYLLENHAAL’S
UNDERWHELMING BLOCKBUSTER”
by Adrian Horton

[Adrian Horton’s review of the Broadway revival of Othello was published in the U.S. edition of The Guardian on 24 March 2025.] 

The record-breaking take on the Shakespearean tragedy might already be a smash, but it’s disappointingly muddled

With the smell of doom and regression in the air, perhaps it’s not surprising that the hottest ticket on Broadway this season is for a 400-year-old tragedy. There’s been much ado about the box office for Othello, a new rendition of Shakespeare’s classic given movie-star wattage. The show at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, grossed $2.8m during one week of previews – the most of any non-musical during a single week on Broadway ever, in part because some orchestra tickets are going for a whopping $921.

The sticker shock is not just an Othello problem – tickets for two other celeb-driven plays on Broadway – Glengarry Glen Ross [31 March-28 June 2025 at the Palace Theatre, with Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk], and George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck [see “Film Stars Twinkle on the Great White Way, Part 2” (30 March 2025)], aren’t averaging much less, and it has already been a lucrative season for celeb-studded Shakespeare as Romeo + Juliet, starring screen-famous Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor, recouped its $7m capitalization before closing last month. But before it even officially opened, Othello became emblematic of Broadway’s trend toward luxury experience and status symbol over popular entertainment, billing Hollywood names in a hyper-competitive, exclusionary market. (Full disclosure: the Guardian, denied tickets for review, paid $400 for a middle orchestra seat.)

Ticket prices, of course, are not the fault of the show itself, nor typically relevant to a review. But the astronomical ask hangs over this minimalist, almost dystopian production, which puts the burden of imagination heavily on the performers and largely fails to reach the level of transcendence demanded by its cost. Directed by the Tony winner Kenny Leon, who guided Washington to a Tony in 2010’s Fences, this austere, underwhelming take on Shakespeare seems to acknowledge that people are not paying for a revival of this particular play, which hasn’t been on Broadway since 1982 and still has rich insights on the masculinity, human fallibility and race more than 400 years after its debut. Instead, it’s for the opportunity to see Gyllenhaal, one of the most versatile and thrilling millennial actors, and especially the widely beloved Washington, rightly hailed in the Playbill as “the most lauded stage and screen actor of his generation”, without the mediation of a screen.

Othello does provide a showcase for these two heavyweight talents to bend iambic pentameter to their will – to convey, with their considerable magnetism, both the plot and the emotional nuances of this tragedy to an audience that probably does not totally understand what they’re saying. And it does not provide much else. Derek McLane’s scenic design keeps the stage bare except for some peeling columns, the props minimal save for occasional accoutrements of a modern military operation (army fatigues, Apple laptops). A lit message at play’s opening sets this medieval drama in “the near future” – still Venice (and later Cyprus), though when Gyllenhaal’s devious Iago first appears to set the stage for the fateful manipulation of the general, one might mistake him for a hustler at a basement club in Bushwick. His eyes near glow in the spotlight, and a preponderance on blue-white floor lighting (design by Natasha Katz) gives the production, particularly its monologues, the feel of a concert at the ruins of the Colosseum.

Star power does the heavy lifting, though not enough to elevate this Othello into the pantheon of Broadway greats. As expected, Washington, at 70, brings the bearing of an elder statesman to the fallible Venetian general, a role he first played at age 22 [at Manhattan’s Fordham University in March 1977, his senior year]. This has the double-sided effect of making the character feel especially tragic – the well-respected veteran general, imbued with glorious authority by one of the most well-respected actors, felled by a shocking streak of insecurity – and ill-fitting; his chemistry with Desdemona (a much younger Molly Osborne, an English actor with an unwieldy American accent) feels more father-daughter than new husband and wife, despite Washington’s best attempts at charming, sexy beguilement. Washington has moments of sublime melody as Othello descends into jealous delusion, the kind of rhapsodic deliveries that feel worth whatever price of admission, but the overall tone of his performance is one of perfunctory hyper-competence.

The show, instead, belongs to Gyllenhaal, an actor of singular intensity who makes a meal out of Iago’s desperate two-facedness. He opens the show with a hypnotic screed against “the Moor” he so loathes – a denigration of blackness (of soul and skin) in Shakespeare’s time titled just enough to resonate more clearly in ours, and never ceases to mesmerize. At turns preening, desperate, boastful, plaintive, easily convincing in his maneuverings of the guileless lieutenant Cassio (Snow White’s Andrew Burnap), as well as gullible townsman Roderigo (Anthony Michael Lopez), Desdemona and Othello, Gyllenhaal’s Iago is the one truly fun performance to watch throughout the show’s nearly three-hour runtime.

The rest is a muddled affair, in details and delivery – Italian polizia but American uniforms, Iago prejudiced against the black-skinned general yet married to Emilia, played by Black actor Kimber Elayne Sprawl. Even Washington seems, at the play’s ignominious and violent end, confused by his character, his grip on reality or his evolution from hero to villain slippery. His Othello is never not compelling; the whole thing, in fact, is consistently competent and spirited, though weighted down by expectation – enough that it should keep the green-eyed monsters who miss out at bay.

[Adrian Horton is an arts writer for Guardian US.

[After my “recovered” report on the Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger’s 1990 production of Othello, I added a personal comment.  It’s appropriate to repeat here, I think, so I’m appending it to this post as well:

When I was trying to make a career as an actor, there were roles I ached to play—a phenomenon among most actors, I believe.  One I got to do was the title character in George Bernard Shaw’s one-act The Man of Destiny: Napoleon as a 26-year-old general.  [I was 31 at the time.]  Most of the others, I never got to.  At the top of that list was Shakespeare’s Iago, arguably one of the greatest villains in theater. 

I wanted to play Iago so badly, I could feel it in my bones.  I came somewhat close: I got to play Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, a kind of Iago-lite in a comedy rather than in a tragedy.  I loved doing that part, largely because Much Ado is my all-time favorite Shakespeare and it was a lovely production—but it wasn’t the brass ring.  Alas!

[I think most actors long to play Hamlet—including some women (though I believe many female actors long to play Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler as their most coveted classic role.  I went for the bad guy.

[This is the first part of a two-part post.  On Sunday, 30 March, I’ll run the second installment, a collection of pieces on another movie star-led Broadway show, Good Night, and Good Luck starring George Clooney as newsman Edward R. Murrow.  Please come back to Rick On Theater in three days to read the second part of “Film Stars Twinkle on the Great White Way.”]

Some Out-Of-Town Plays from the Archive

 

OTHELLO
by William Shakespeare
The Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger (Washington, D.C.)
Folger Theatre
27 November 1990-27 January 1991 

[In the 1980s, my father sat on the board of what was then the Folger Theatre Group (and later, The Folger Theatre) in Washington, D.C.  During that time, my parents were loyal patrons of the troupe’s productions, staged in the two-thirds-scale Elizabethan Theatre within the esteemed Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill.  Whenever I was in Washington, I went with them.  Over the years, I saw many Folger shows, some reports on which have landed on Rick On Theater.

[Over the years, the theater company changed names several times, changed venue once, and added a large second house.  I won’t go over the company’s history now, but in 1986, the theater completely reorganized, brought in a new artistic director, Michael Kahn, and changed its name to The Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger.  (In 1992, the company became the Shakespeare Theatre Company—and finally, simply The Shakespeare Theatre; see the report on Much Ado About Nothing, below—and took up residence in the Lansburgh Theatre in downtown Washington.) 

[My dad left the theater’s board in 1986 with the departure of the previous artistic director, John Neville-Andrews, but my folks remained avid attendees of STC productions.  One of the company’s last productions at the Folger Theatre (another, unrelated company now resides in the Elizabethan playhouse, using the name Folger Theatre) was an unusual mounting of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello starring Avery Brooks as the Moor, Andre Braugher as Iago, and Franchelle Stewart Dorn as Emilia; all three actors are African-Americans—as was the director, Harold Scott (who died in 2006 at 70).

[The production ran from 27 November 1990 to 27 January 1991.  I don’t have any record of exactly when my folks and I saw the show, although, considering the dates, I’d say it was around New Year.  One reason I don’t know what performance of the Folger’s Othello I saw is that I never wrote a report on it. 

[Though the production has stayed in my memory since I saw it—for several reasons, as I hope you’ll see—I didn’t make a record of it.  (I have mentioned it several times in other contexts, however, and I have some scattered notes.)  I’m going to try to reconstruct my recollection of the experience and write a “recovered” report.  Let’s hope it comes to something.

[One additional note:  I didn’t really know Harold Scott, but he was a member of the now-defunct American Directors Institute, a professional association for stage and artistic directors, and I edited ADI’s newsletter,  Directors Notes, from 1986 to 1988.  I did, as you’ll read, know Avery Brooks.  I got an MFA in acting from what is now the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.  I was there from 1975 to 1977 and Brooks was on the faculty and one of my teachers.]

The Othello at the Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger, which ran from 27 November 1990 to 27 January 1991, was an extremely provocative prospect.  Director Harold Scott [1935-2006], former artistic director of the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and the Peterborough Players in New Hampshire, cast not just Othello with an African-American actor, but also Iago.  (I’ll address this casting more in a bit.)

This radical application of non-traditional casting—J. Wynn Rousuck of the Baltimore Sun called it “an inspired choice”—was a way for Scott to solve the two thorniest problems of the play: what were Iago’s motives for destroying Othello, and how could a man of Othello’s stature and achievements be so easily manipulated?.

Interestingly, there is historical validity to this casting choice.  After the Moors were expelled from Spain in 1492, many dispersed around the western Mediterranean basin.  This was especially so in Venice and Cyprus.  Scott, who had payed Othello himself when he was an actor, did research into this Renaissance-era history in his preparation for this production.

Additionally, Avery Brooks, who played the title role in Scott’s production, was a teacher of mine in grad school in the late ’70s.  He’d worked previously with Scott on Broadway in Paul Robeson in 1988, but I hadn’t seen him on stage since I finished my MFA in 1977. 

(I don’t know if this is coincidental, but the graduate theater program from which I got my degree, and where Brooks also earned his MFA, was at Rutgers University.  The distinguished African-American actor, singer, athlete, and civil-rights activist Paul Robeson, 1898-1976, was also educated at Rutgers. 

(The new arts school at Rutgers was eventually called the Mason Gross School, but strong consideration was given to naming it after Robeson.  Paul Robeson performed Othello on Broadway with an otherwise white cast in 1943.)

Because the Folger Theatre is roughly two-thirds-sized, the stage dimensions are small, which makes everything human-sized seem gigantic.  John Ezell’s set, therefore, felt claustrophobic and imprisoning.  Like the Elizabethan playhouses on which it’s modeled, the theater is wood, mostly unpainted; Ezell’s wooden set merged with the theater interior so the auditorium space combined with the stage space to pull the audience into the world of the play.  

The designer wove Moorish and Venetian elements together in an assemblage of wooden lattices and jagged staircases that reminded at least one spectator of an M. C. Escher print, with stairs that loop back on themselves like a Möbius strip but don’t go anywhere. 

The construction isn’t representative of any specific place so that spectators can imagine any location the play requires in either rich, sumptuous, European Venice or isolated, romantic, oriental Cyprus.

Built upstage of the thrust of the forestage, in the inner stage behind the columns holding up the “heavens,” Ezell’s structure blended with the permanent architecture of the Elizabethan stage.  Partially visible within the structure were two large golden statues, a winged lion and a horse that are the symbols of Venice. 

When we entered the theater, a large bed covered with crimson draperies was at center stage.  (Like all Elizabethan theaters, the Folger has no curtain.)  In a dumb show before the action of the play started, Othello (Avery Brooks) and Desdemona (Jordan Baker) entered from above the bed.  They walked slowly around it from opposite sides, accompanied by the sound of an African “talking drum.” 

(“The talking drum,” according to Wikipedia, “is an hourglass-shaped drum from West Africa, whose pitch can be regulated to mimic the tone and prosody of human speech.”  In addition to the drumming, there is original music composed by Lawrence Morris for bassoon, French horn, African trumpet, and the African drum throughout the performance. 

(Morris had worked with Brooks on the actor’s television series, A Man Called Hawk, for which he composed the theme music, and Ntozake Shange’s Spell #7 for the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1979.  Morris also composed the music for Harold Scott’s earlier version of Othello with Brooks, on which this production is based, for the Rutgers Shakespeare Company in New Brunswick, New Jersey, earlier in 1990.)

The couple crossed to the bed and, facing one another, knelt on it, letting their robes fall.  Naked, they embraced each other lying across the bed as it glided into the shadows and disappeared.  It was a strikingly sexy scene; with which Scott clearly wanted to show that Othello and Desdemona have a passionate physical relationship.

In addition to providing a suggestively steamy opening (the likes of which, I suspect, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the theater’s home and parent organization, had not seen before), the opening mime scene made Iago’s (Andre Braugher) words to Brabantio (Desdemona’s father; Emery Battis)—“Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is topping your white ewe” and “you'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse; you'll have your nephews neigh to you; you'll have coursers for cousins and gennets for germans” (I.1)—all the more unsettling because we’d just seen Othello and Desdemona making love—in a manner that vastly contrasted with Iago’s malevolent distortions.

The production’s main asset, after the idea of casting Iago as a black man, was the visual impact of the look of the set and costumes, and the opening dumb show.  I’ve mentioned the impression the initial view of the set produced, followed by the mimed love scene; the visual impact continued through the  show.  One reviewer, for example, compared the appearances of the Duke of Venice (Ted van Griethuysen), Brabantio, and the Venetian senators (Sean Cullen as Lodovico, K. Lype O’Dell as Gratiano) to Titian portraits come to life.  

When the setting changed to Cyprus (act II, scene 1), the backdrop shifted to a blue sky cyc—or sky-and-sea cyc—which made the pillars and staircases pop out.  The new set made an equally strong visual impression, even though the overall sense of claustrophobia remained.  The feeling of being closed in  was an important element in Scott’s Othello, which isn’t something I usually associate with this play. 

The reliance on visual and non-verbal imagery to communicate this important aspect of his production was necessary because Scott didn’t make any alterations to the text to emphasize it.  Neither dialogue nor situations were changed to accommodate the casting or design of STF’s Othello.

By far the most significant and provocative visual impressions, however, came from the fact that the actors playing Iago and Emilia, his wife, were both African-Americans.  Scott’s non-traditional casting was far more impactful than just visual, but its visual effect was one of the director’s most successful decisions, particularly since non-verbal and visual aspects of the staging were often salient.

In a traditionally-cast Othello, the character of the Moor is usually spotlighted because he’s the lone black figure among white Venetians.  He’s clearly “the other” and this impression is often enhanced because Othello’s commonly costumed in African or Moorish dress.  

In this production, though, Brooks’s Othello and Braugher’s Iago—along with Franchelle Stewart Dorn’s Emilia—were conspicuous together. This affected not only the dynamic between the two men, but between them and everyone else. 

There’s a link between the two men from the very beginning that isn’t shared with the Venetians.  It helps us understand why Othello’s so willing to accept Iago in ways that aren’t clear in productions in which Iago is white.. Here, Scott provides an obvious and fundamental reason for Brooks’s Othello to trust Braugher’s Iago with little question.

Not only did Scott provide the two men a common racial identity, but he intimated that they share the same ethnic culture.  They were essentially kin; a man can always trust his kinsman, after all. 

Scott explained it this way in an interview in Asides, the STF subscriber newsletter: “If you and I come from similar circumstances, such as the same home town, I would think there are grounds for trusting you beyond the people of the culture we’re both alien to.”

For instance, in act II, scene 1, along with their Venetian military garb, Othello and Iago both wore traditional Nigerian Tuareg headpieces. (A captioned photo was in the program.  The costume designs were by Daniel L. Lawson.)  This distinguished them more from the white soldiers around them and underscored the ethnic and racial connection between the two African men. 

(Scott also researched the Tuaregs, a Muslim ethnic group whose native territory overlaps with that of the Moors, including Mauritania, whose name is derived from the same root as that of the English designation ‘Moor.’)

To maintain a separation between the two black characters, however, Iago wore a European uniform at all other times, while Othello always wore his African robes.  Even when he donned a Venetian gown, he wore an African robe under it.  Lawson noted in Asides that “the fabric closest to [Othello’s] body is always African.”  This suggested that Braugher’s Iago had assumed a European identity more than Brooks’s Othello had.

As for Iago’s motive for bringing Othello down, the racial and ethnic bond Scott supplied the two characters magnified Iago’s sense of betrayal and rejection when Othello promoted Cassio, a white Venetian, to the post Iago coveted, Othello’s lieutenant—essentially his second-in-command.

(Iago is Othello’s “ancient,” or ensign, a sort of aide or assistant.  Traditionally, the ensign was the bearer of the unit’s banner, or ensign; it’s the lowest-ranking commissioned officer.  Today it exists principally in navies and coast guards; in most modern armies, the lowest officer rank is second or junior lieutenant.)

Scott’s Iago watched Othello, his comrade, his brother secure his own position in Venetian society by marrying a patrician—white—Venetian lady, but refuse to use his position and influence to make sure that Iago rose with him. 

It would further deepen Iago’s sense of betrayal that Brooks’s Othello, older than Braugher’s Iago (28, according to the text [act I, scene 3]; Braugher was, in fact, 28 at the time of the production, while Brooks was 42, 14 years his castmate’s senior.)  The two parts are usually cast at around the same age so as to be equals.as opponents, but here Othello is a father-figure and mentor to Iago, worsening the pain the younger man would feel.

The reverse is also true: Othello would be terribly pained to learn that his protégé, a man he regards almost as a son, had deceived him in an effort to destroy him.  [In a later production of the play  for the 1993 Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Scott detailed a backstory for Othello and Iago in which the older man had essentially adopted the young Iago and raised him as his son.]

Like Othello, Emilia also wore African dress and jewelry, so in scenes with Othello, Iago, and Emilia, it was Desdemona who was the outlier.  On Cyprus, Desdemona became even more the outsider, and as the play developed she was more and more immersed in a world that’s not her own and where she doesn’t know the customs.

To play up the relationship between Iago and Othello further with non-verbal cues—even if it was feigned on Iago’s part—Braugher’s ancient shook his head in apparent anger and grimaced at Brabantio’s racist diatribe in act I, scene 3 when Othello goes before the Venetian Senate; Brooks’s Othello gestured quietly to Iago to keep cool.

Remember that we just heard Iago in scene 1 shout similar slurs to Brabantio in order to anger him.  In that scene, Othello’s ancient hides his face in his cloak to keep Brabantio from recognizing him.  Furthermore, when Roderigo (Floyd King), Iago’s (white) henchman, coolly tosses off his line about Othello’s “thick-lips,” Braugher’s Iago didn’t even flinch. 

Scott and Braugher were showing us that Iago was so duplicitous and malicious he wouldn’t even balk at deploying or hearing racist epithets if it serves his ends—even if they insult himself.

Scott’s visual and non-verbal expression of the relationship between the two black men was made concrete in the moment just before the end of the production’s first half (at act III, scene 3).  Iago pledges himself to “wrong’d Othello’s service,” and Brooks’s Othello climbed up to the walkway, lifted his arm to salute Iago below, and announced, “Now art thou my lieutenant.” 

Braugher’s Iago responded by raising his arm to salute Othello, declaring, “I am your own forever.”  Both men gave what we recognize as the clenched-fist black-power salute, made familiar from the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.  (Both Scott, b. 1935, and Brooks, b. 1948, were old enough to have remembered that famous demonstration, and Braugher, b. 1962, surely would have learned about it as he grew up.)  It served as a sign of solidarity between brothers.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel that though Scott made an exciting decision in casting Braugher as Iago, his production really lived up to the promise. 

We saw Iago use and listen to racist language without reaction, though it was when neither Othello nor anyone who’s part of his conspiracy was in attendance.  Emilia also utters a vituperative comment to Othello in act V, scene 2 about Desdemona being “too fond of her most filthy bargain.”  Such racist language coming from the mouth of a black woman is different than it would be from a white Venetian Emilia, and so should have called for some reaction from Othello.

(It’s in act V, scene 2 that Desdemona is revealed once again on the bed we haven’t seen since the mimed prologue to the performance.  She’s asleep when the bed returns to view . . . and it is where she and Othello die.  The production is bookended by scenes with the bed, one a scene of love and passion, the other one of passion and bloody, tragic death. 

(In both scenes, the couple end in each other’s embrace.  Scott is quoted in a comment in the Christian Science Monitor as saying, “The marriage bed, how ironic, becomes the funeral bed, and also how tragic.'')

I understand Scott’s point in casting Braugher as Iago: it made the play about jealousy and betrayal rather than racial hatred.  I interpret Othello that way anyway—that Iago is pissed off because he was passed over for the post Cassio got—so Scott’s decision reinforced the original point of the play for me, and diminished an imposed interpretation that’s accrued in more modern times. 

Braugher, incidentally, expressed the same understanding in a comment in the same issue of Asides with Scott’s earlier remarks: “I don’t think it’s a play about race, but about pride and love gone bad.”                               

I would have to say, though, that the combination of the provocative casting and the production’s ultimately not doing enough with that choice, raised several unresolved questions that were oddly disconcerting and not particularly illuminating. 

If I found Scott’s Othello somewhat unsatisfying, it was because I felt he was uncertain about his concept of this play and, therefore, wasn’t sure about committing to a more forceful follow-through.  His directorial hesitancy seemed to have infected Brooks’s performance, and probably Braugher’s as well (though less obviously).

Most of the performances were inconsistent, a result, I think, of Scott’s uncertain hand.  The arresting quality of the visual production went a distance to make up for this deficiency, but not far enough.  All of the leads except Dorn seemed uncertain about the interrelationships Scott was aiming for and seemed adrift as to how to play them.

Brooks was best known to the general public for his portrayals of the title character, a sort of enigmatic equalizer, in the short-lived 1989 TV series A Man Called Hawk (set and filmed in Washington) and on Spenser: For Hire (1985-88), the show in which Hawk first appeared.  [Later he’d be seen as Captain Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-99).]

Hawk was a strong, decisive men [as was DS9’s Sisko], the kind of actor I knew Brooks to be from my personal experience with him—what Othello should be.  But Brooks came off more than a tad namby-pamby in this Othello, undercutting what I thought should be going on.  Rousuck called him “unexceptional.”

I’m not talking about his physical strength, or the vulnerability the character has for Iago’s duplicity.  I’m talking about the actor’s apparent lack of commitment to his character’s “score,” the inner self Brooks and Scott said they’d developed for this Othello—and which was intimated in several choices I saw enacted on stage, but not consistently or completely carried out.

Braugher provided a dramatic moment at the end of the play that demonstrated what Scott’s concept could have yielded.  In act V, scene 2, Brooks’s Othello, drawing his dagger, crossed to Iago and cut a cross into the bound man’s breast.  Braugher cried out and dropped to his knees—but he remained defiant, shouting, “Demand me nothing: . . . From this time forth I never will speak word.”  

Iago remains silent for the rest of the scene and play.  It was a display of the kind of strength all the principal characters should have shown throughout the play but seldom did.

As Desdemona, Jordan Baker, an actress whose work I didn’t know (but who got an MFA from the Mason Gross School where both Brooks and Scott taught), displayed more strength than many of the other leads (again, except for Dorn). 

Desdemona’s toughness, for instance, when she stands against her father before the Venetian Senate in act I, scene 3 didn’t disappear from Baker’s performance after she arrived in Cyprus at the beginning of act II.  Later, when Othello accuses his wife of betraying him in act IV, scene 2, Baker angrily berated him with “By heaven, you do me wrong,” pounding him with her fists.  There were other instances as well of Baker’s committed acting.

Dorn, one of Washington’s most commanding actors (whom I saw as a terrific Cleopatra opposite Kenneth Haigh’s Antony at STF in 1988), was a winning and, I thought, an interesting Emilia.  Actors frequently play Emilia as angry and resentful, but Dorn avoided this interpretation and delivered the “’Tis not a year or two shows us a man” speech in act III, scene 4 in a way that used apparent lightness to mask great anguish.

She played her emotional and sexual attachment to Iago with total transparency, and she let us all see the pain she felt from his coldness in return. 

The rest of the featured cast—several of whom are Washington favorites: Dorn, King, van Griethuysen—blew hot and cold, sometimes stepping up to the mark and other times falling short.  That kind of uneven production is the fault of the director, and, as I said, I blame Scott’s apparent inability or unwillingness to commit to the point he seemed to want to make by casting Iago and Emilia as black characters. 

If Scott had guided his actors towards performances more fully connected to the director’s central idea, the play’s impact might have come through more thoroughly than I felt it did at the Folger.  Unhappily, STF’s Othello didn’t live up to its own potential, partly because the director and several of the actors didn’t seem to have committed to a vision of the play—at least not completely.

The production was extremely popular in the Nation’s Capital.  It sold out the entire run of the show and played to standing-room-only audiences every night.  In the Washington Post, Lloyd Rose labeled the production “the kind of theater you dream about without ever believing you’ll see it.”  The Sun’s Rousuck dubbed it an “able production.” 

Louise Sweeney punned in CSM that STF’s Othello  “takes on different colors in the powerful production” and that Scott has mounted “a highly innovative . . . showcase for non-traditional casting.”  Sweeney concluded: “This production of ``Othello'' is brilliant, impassioned, and provocative.”

In the Chicago Tribune, William B. Collins dubbed this Othello “an exciting production” that “has caused a stir for the unconventional casting.”  Writing of the New Brunswick mounting of this production, Alvin Klein of the New York Times’ “New Jersey Weekly” said, “It may be the same old story, but images appear anew and insights abound.”  Scott’s casting decisions “illuminate Shakespeare’s tragedy,” Klein added.

[In 2005, Avery Brooks returned to Othello at what was by then the Shakespeare Theatre Company, house at the Lansburgh Theatre.  Directed by STC artistic director Michael Kahn and appearing opposite Patrick Page, a Caucasian actor, as Iago, Brooks (then 57) played an aging Moor married to a young Desdemona. 

[The Washington Post’s Peter Marks described the mounting as a “faithful, straightforward rendition,” but with an “intelligence guiding the production.”  Marks added, “This is not a paucity of imagination, but a veteran director's way of paying respect.”  He pronounced it “at all times engrossing,” but complained that it imparted a “muted impact.”

[In 1997, using a concept devised by actor Patrick Stewart, the Shakespeare Theatre reversed the racial makeup of Othello, casting Stewart (another Star Trek series alumnus) as a white Othello opposite an almost entirely African-American company, led by Ron Canada as Iago; Franchelle Stewart Dorn once again played Emilia.  According to J. Wynn Rousuck in the Baltimore Sun:

Described by director Jude Kelly as a “photo negative,” this rethinking is one of several bold and largely successful choices in a production that also features an increased emphasis on abuse against women.

[In the Post, however, Lloyd Rose observed that “the potential dynamite fizzles—largely because race prejudice is only one of several dramatic elements in the script and won’t stand up to being made into what the play is about.’”]

[When I was trying to make a career as an actor, there were roles I ached to play—a phenomenon among most actors, I believe.  One I got to do was the title character in George Bernard Shaw’s one-act The Man of Destiny: Napoleon as a 26-year-old general.  Most of the others, I never got to.  At the top of that list was Shakespeare’s Iago, arguably one of the greatest villains in theater. 

[I wanted to play Iago so badly, I could feel it in my bones.  I came somewhat close: I got to play Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, a kind of Iago-lite in a comedy rather than in a tragedy.  I loved doing that part, largely because Much Ado is my all-time favorite Shakespeare and it was a lovely production—but it wasn’t the brass ring.  Alas!]

*  *  *  *
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare Theatre (Washington, D.C.)
in association with the Hartford Stage (Connecticut)
Lansburgh Theatre
9 & 12 January 2003 

I saw three shows while in D.C. over the holidays [in 2002-03]: I’ll start with the easiest and most dismissible production: William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing on 31 December 2002.  [I’ve posted the other reports in earlier pieces on Rick On Theater: Don DeLillo’s The Day Room in “Three Plays from Distinguished Companies from the Archives,” published on 16 April 2020, and Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s South Pacific in “Some Musicals from the Archives,” 24 February 2019.].  

I don’t know if the Shakespeare Theatre co-produced this show or just invited Mark Lamos to import it (I suspect the latter), but it ran in Hartford, apparently to good enough reviews, last year with essentially the same cast.  (One or two featured characters were locally recast—the leads were all from the Hartford production.)  I don’t know most of the actors, though most had substantial credits in New York and major regionals. 

The Claudio, Barrett Foa [later a regular cast member of NCIS: Los Angeles], has even done several musical productions on and Off Broadway, though he’s only 24.  (He was Jesus in the Off-Broadway revival of Godspell that Sondheim oversaw, and he was one of the dancers in Mama Mia!)  The only actor I was familiar with was Karen Ziemba, who played Beatrice.  (She won a Tony for Contact a couple of years ago.) 

Now, everyone did a nice enough job, but the show just didn’t sparkle.  Lamos set it in 1920, and the costumes were terrific, but I wonder if that set a tone in everyone’s mind that kept everyone laid back.  It was Shakespeare à la Noel Coward, if you can picture that.  The low-comic characters were played quite well, especially Dogberry (Richard Ziman). 

If this weren’t my favorite Shakespeare (so I enjoy it almost regardless), and if it hadn’t been New Year’s Eve (so I was as much in the mood for an evening’s pastime as a robust theater experience), I might have objected more.  Mother felt it wasn’t up to the Shakespeare’s usual standards, but I don’t have enough of a sense of their overall level to agree or not. 

(It’s ironic, but I saw a Much Ado at the Folger Theatre, which was the predecessor of the Shakespeare, some years ago (1985), set in about the same period—the ’30s.  It was set aboard an ocean liner—the S.S. Messina—which made it reminiscent of Anything Goes more than Shakespeare.  It didn’t work, either!  

(I remember having one big question.  Before the end of the play, after the plot has been exposed but before everything has been revealed, Don John, the instigator—and the character I played in a 1979 Off-Off-Broadway showcase of Much Ado—escapes and flees Messina.  Now, how would he do that on board a ship in the ocean?  Drop a rowboat over the side?  Riiight!  That has always bothered me—and I saw that show almost three decades ago.)

*  *  *  *
THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW
by William Nicholson
Round House Theatre (Bethesda, Md.)
9 May 2006 

Near the end of April [2006], I went down to Washington, D.C., for a short visit between my mom’s birthday (7 April) and Mother’s Day (14 May).  My mother subscribes to a couple of theaters in D.C. and she had tickets for two shows while I was in town.  

(The second performance was Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill  at the Arena Stage; see “Two Looks Back,” posted on ROT on 23 July 2016.  Mom usually goes with a couple of friends, but one friend was recuperating from a medical procedure so instead of getting extra tickets for me to join them, Mom’s friend generously gave me her seat.) 

At the matinee on Saturday, 22 April, we drove over to Bethesda to see the Round House Theatre’s Retreat from Moscow by Brit writer William Nicholson.  (It played in New York City back in 2003-04 when it was nominated for several Tonys, including Best Play.  But, then, I always wonder what the competition was that season.) 

Once again, the acting was quite good.  (The fellow playing Jamie, the son, Tim German, had a peculiar “British” accent—but let that pass; it wasn’t consequential.)  The problem here, as some reviews both in D.C. and from the original New York production pointed out, is that the play is unrelentingly bleak and unpleasant. 

Directed by James Edmondson, The Retreat from Moscow is about a marriage breaking apart, with the son caught in the middle.  (It’s semi-autobiographical, and as with other such plays about hard times in the writers’ lives, say Arthur Miller’s After the Fall, I often figure that apparently the playwright had to write it—but why do I have to suffer through it, too?) 

No one’s sympathetic, not even really Jamie, who’s unable to say anything to either parent—even his mother, Alice (Carol Mayo Jenkins), when she threatens a) suicide or b) murder.  I kept thinking: ‘Geeze, just split up already and get over it!’ 

Even the writing, which is pedestrian and plain—perhaps a virtue under other circumstances—doesn’t make this a good evening (or afternoon) in the theater.  Nicholson’s not a theater poet, to be sure.  A hint might have come from the play’s title: Edward (Rick Foucheux), a history prof, sees his marriage as Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow—and he reads descriptions of the horror that that march was.  (If only he’d compared it to Pearl Harbor—at least it would have been over quickly!)