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Bad theater can be uniquely enraging.
(Arguably, Im here writing this because I once gotvery mad while watching a play.)
But it can also be simply baffling.Who approved of this?
What does this thing actually want to say?
Is anyone in this room, onstage or off, having a good time?
Why do the cops flak jackets say Polizia while the military uniforms have American flags on them?
Does this play take place in a future where the U.S. has annexed Venice?
But what of the motive-hunting of a motiveless production?
LeonsOthellohas no opinion, no reason for being beyond the movie stars at its center.
It barely even has a pulse.
Eye contact is in bizarrely low supply; even more scarce is any sense of urgency or enthusiasm.
Gyllenhaal, while sturdy enough with the language, achieves only intermittent glints of Iagos venomous vitality.
Back in hisJarhead*crewcut, hes square-shouldered and furrow-browed, straightforward and bro-ish.
What hes not doing is tapping into a deeper, more frightening, less decipherable devil.
Is it racist or does itshowracism?
(Both can be true.)
None of that is present on Leons stage.
Washington seems most comfortable leaning into little relatable flourishes that might earn a chuckle his Why did I marry?
(Leon leaves in place pretty much all of the plays language that idealizes whiteness and denigrates Blackness.)
Then he pauses before continuing, almost nonchalantly: Yet she must die.
Is that what the production what any production ofOthello really wants?
Washington isnt alone in his drastic underplaying of the storys stakes.
Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse / Full of crusadoes, she tells Emilia.
But Osborne and Sprawl enter the stage casually, taking Leons favorite route as they meander toward downstage-center.
Osbornes Where should I lose that handkerchief, Emilia?
sounds about equivalent to, Girl, have you seen my car keys?
How does it weigh on them?
Who battles it, who hides from it, who exploits it?
Who feels anything about it at all?
Othellois at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
Correction, March 24:This reference toJarheadhas been corrected.
