Othello
Opening Night: March 23, 2025
Theater: Barrymore Theatre
Website: othellobway.com
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March 23, 2025
In short, as I felt the production’s blunt force more and more, I grasped its aura and aims less and less.
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March 24, 2025
This “Othello” is still a once-in-a-lifetime experience — be it for this towering cast or its relatability to this current social moment. The depth is all there, but this production simply does not live up to its performers.
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March 23, 2025
It’s weird. “Othello” isn’t witty “Hamlet.” The play is not even as funny as “Macbeth.” Maybe it’s because they’re in the presence of celebrities. But I get the sense that the viewers are searching for something — anything — to grasp onto on this long, chilly ride they maxed out their credit cards to sit through. And they choose laughter. Laughs in lieu of gasps or tears.
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March 23, 2025
As much as you may think you need what Othello calls “the ocular proof,” the production is not a must-see.
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March 23, 2025
The tale of Othello is as old as time, but it’s the timing and the telling that elevates this ancient classic. Thanks to a bravura company, the telling is first class.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 23, 2025
This Othello is…fine. Directed by Kenny Leon in a manner that can only be described as haphazard, there’s nothing horribly wrong about it, and it’s certainly thrilling to see the two leads, both of whom have undeniable stage chops in addition to movie star charisma, going toe-to-toe right in front of you. But audiences can be forgiven for wanting something more after all the hype.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 23, 2025
There’s nothing wrong with updating a Shakespeare classic from over 500 years ago to reflect modern times and sensibilities. But if you’re going to do it — then do it! Director Kenny Leon’s new production, however, seems caught between reverence for the original source material and a seemingly half-hearted attempt to renovate the setting around which the classic action revolves.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 23, 2025
Directed by 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 over 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.
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March 23, 2025
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.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 23, 2025
Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Iago, certainly gives the Moor of Venice plenty to fight against, if he chose to do so. Here is far and away the most dynamic performance of the night, a riveting, turbo-charged interpretation that avoids any and all villainous cliches, or flowery self-doubts, and just presents a malevolent but highly effective military guy who sets out to do what he wants to straightforwardly do, a train hurtling down a track, gaining speed with every scene, determined to knock the Othello and Desdemona carriage into the ditch.
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March 23, 2025
Washington’s tear-jerking post-mortem apologies are likely to fall on deaf audience ears, Othello’s suicide a decidedly un-noble good riddance.
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March 23, 2025
This most unusual and often riveting “Othello” opened Sunday at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 23, 2025
For all its star power and chemistry between the leads (Washington-Gyllenhaal and Washington-Osborne), however, not much of this production is particularly original or groundbreaking.
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March 23, 2025
Clumsily staged by director Kenny Leon, this “Othello” seems to have little on its mind beyond a gritted-teeth determination to carry across the text of the play. “Othello” is “Othello” — one of the richest and most wrenching of Shakespeare’s tragedies. It would take a wildly misbegotten production to spoil it entirely. But that hypothetical wildly misbegotten production might contain some genuinely big risks; this production, instead, simply falls flat.
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March 23, 2025
Kenny Leon’s passionless new production is about as far from that overlap as it’s possible to get. Audience and ensemble alike are lost in a hinterland so disconcertingly sleepy and beige that it’s hard to summon anything as visceral as fury.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 23, 2025
The play, which opened March 23 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, is a formidable showcase for Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, even if the uninspired production around them leaves much to be desired.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 23, 2025
Sadly, in the new “Othello” on Broadway, with Denzel Washington in the title role and Jake Gyllenhaal as Eminem—sorry, Iago—the lines not only fail to stir any feeling; they might be an epitaph for this disappointing, even dismal staging, directed by the busy and generally reliable Kenny Leon.
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March 23, 2025
While it’s far from the worst Shakespeare production I’ve seen this season, it lacks the essential spark that would elevate it from “not terrible” to “complete revelation.”
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March 23, 2025
After all the blaring headlines around “Othello” on Broadway—Denzel! Jake! Tickets near a thousand dollars!—how strange that the production itself is so lacking in execution.
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March 24, 2025
Though Leon’s two previous Shakespearean outings, both at the Delacorte, had specific takes on character and setting, there is nothing powering his Othello, leaving its two blockbuster leads, Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, stranded.
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