If there is an American leading man better-equipped to bring Shakespeare to the masses than Denzel Washington , I can’t think of him. Well, “the masses” may be a stretch — the new production of “ Othello ” that Washington leads, now playing at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, has broken box office records on the strength of orchestra tickets selling for over $900 a seat. That lucky group of people who will get to see this “Othello” will get to luxuriate in Washington’s silky, fluent delivery of the Bard’s English, and to thrill to the painful irony of Othello’s fundamental lack of understanding that he’s being played by the jealous, venal Iago (an excellent Jake Gyllenhaal ).
But that’s about all they’ll get. 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. Washington, here, is the title character, a military general whose personnel choices have enraged Gyllenhaal’s scheming underling.
The great tragedy of Othello, perhaps, is how easily he allows his misplaced trust in Iago to lead him astray; the villain’s well-chosen lie wrenc.