Othello (NYTW)
Opening Night: December 12, 2016
Closing: January 18, 2017
Theater: NY Theatre Workshop
NYTW Usual Suspect and Tony Award winner Sam Gold will return to NYTW to direct David Oyelowo (Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Histories, Selma, Queen of Katwe) in the title role and Daniel Craig (Betrayal, Spectre) as ‘Iago’ in William Shakespeare’s Othello.
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December 12, 2016
What’s the greatest live Othello you’ve ever seen? Not easy, is it? Audiences and scholars have long admired Shakespeare’s 1603 tragedy about a proud Moorish general destroyed by jealousy over his white, Venetian wife—a paranoid delusion wickedly orchestrated by his sadistic ensign. But finding a production that does justice to this ugly, relentless masterpiece is rare. For centuries, the title role was played by Caucasian actors in blackface (as late as Laurence Olivier in 1964). More recent attempts carry the historical baggage of American civil rights and postcolonial guilt. What distinguishes Sam Gold’s incisive, brutalist staging at New York Theatre Workshop is a right-this-moment military frame and two ferocious performances by Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo. As Iago and Othello, respectively, the British film stars engage in a symbolic (and literal) wrestling match about race, class and sexuality—at the same time transcending it.
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December 12, 2016
“I am your own forever.” When these words are uttered in the electrifying new production of “Othello,” which opened on Monday night at the New York Theater Workshop, you feel you’ve heard the most frightening vow ever spoken. It is delivered at the end of the first half of a performance that is drawn in lightning. The speaker is a soldier, Iago by name, played by Daniel Craig; the object of his ardent declaration is his general, Othello, portrayed by David Oyelowo. Their faces are as close as clasped hands, foreheads pressed hard together as if in some ungodly mind meld. By that moment, you have come to know these men intimately. You understand exactly how they’ve arrived at such a moment of communion and exactly where they’re headed. As presented by two actors at the top of their game, in a marriage made in both heaven and hell, the story of Othello and Iago could not possibly end otherwise than it does.
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