Circle in the Square on Feb. 16.Now, a little over a week later, the celebrated playwright’s timeless 1603 tragedy “Othello” has opened at the Barrymore Theatre with Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal.Shows will run from February until Sunday, June 8.At all performances, Washington, 70, takes on the iconic Othello role while Gyllenhaal, 44, will inhabit the scheming Iago.
His character was passed up for a promotion and tricks our titular hero into thinking his wife Desdemona (Molly Osborne) committed infidelity driving him mad in the process.What makes this production of the well-worn text different than its predecessors are the subtle updates Tony Award-winning director Kenny Leon has worked into the story.“Kenny keeps calling it the ‘near future,'” Washington said in a sit-down video interview with Broadway.com. “It’s cell phones, watches, and not in a gimmicky way…so it’s like Desert Storm, and so all the research we find online is about those wars and what it does to us and PTSD seizures…we don’t get to hide behind sandals and flowery language.
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