If there’s an American main man better-equipped to deliver Shakespeare to the plenty than Denzel Washington, I can’t consider him.

Nicely, “the plenty” could also be a stretch — the brand new manufacturing of “Othello” that Washington leads, now taking part in on the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, has damaged field workplace data on the power of orchestra tickets promoting for over $900 a seat. That fortunate group of people that will get to see this “Othello” will get to luxuriate in Washington’s silky, fluent supply of the Bard’s English, and to thrill to the painful irony of Othello’s elementary lack of knowledge that he’s being performed by the jealous, venal Iago (a superb Jake Gyllenhaal). 

However that’s about all they’ll get. Clumsily staged by director Kenny Leon, this “Othello” appears to have little on its thoughts past a gritted-teeth willpower to hold throughout the textual content of the play. “Othello” is “Othello” — one of many richest and most wrenching of Shakespeare’s tragedies. It could take a wildly misbegotten manufacturing to spoil it completely. However that hypothetical wildly misbegotten manufacturing may comprise some genuinely massive dangers; this manufacturing, as a substitute, merely falls flat.

Washington, right here, is the title character, a navy common whose personnel decisions have enraged Gyllenhaal’s scheming underling. The nice tragedy of Othello, maybe, is how simply he permits his misplaced belief in Iago to steer him astray; the villain’s well-chosen lie wrenches aside Othello’s marriage to Desdemona (Molly Osborne). The straightforward, brutal brilliance of Iago’s scheme is the way in which that it takes benefit of a sure intractable actuality. Othello, for all his brilliance, is the Different — a person of coloration amongst white Venetians — and exists inside a sure matrix of barely-concealed distrust.

All of which would appear to supply Washington and Gyllenhaal lots with which to work. And, certainly, this “Othello,” we’re knowledgeable by a projected legend because the present begins, transpires in “the close to future.” Its characters alternate between business-casual (Washington enters tucking a costume shirt into slacks) and up to date navy fatigues. Transposing Shakespeare to one thing like the current day is hardly novel (it occurred earlier this season in director Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet,” as an illustration), however, when completed nicely, it extracts some essential perception in regards to the unchangingness of human nature.

As an alternative, “Othello’s” setting now appears successfully random, much less a selection than the refusal to choose. (That’s not an issue confronted by Gyllenhaal, a minimum of, whose alternation between ingratiating suavity and darting, weaselly insecurity flip his Iago into an totally fashionable determine — his phrases could also be Elizabethan, however his bearing is that of a males’s rights activist.) The latest movie “Gladiator II” made clear that interval trappings don’t overwhelm Washington; certainly, in that potboiler, old-timey raiments enhanced his bearing. His nondescript outfitting right here, although, diminishes him; his Othello, missing a sure verve from the primary, appears in a way defeated at the same time as, early on, he’s driving excessive, making his eventual collapse really feel a contact too inevitable. 

If this manufacturing should be set (sigh) within the close to future, why not add touches to the staging that clarify we’re one step nearer to dystopia? As an alternative, the stage is dominated by columns with a terra cotta impact, however little else; the world Othello and Iago inhabits appears much less drained of coloration than awaiting it, as if Leon forgot to place it there within the first place. Different decisions appear so misjudged as to be outright weird: Gyllenhaal’s a number of monologues to the viewers confessing his want to sabotage Othello happen underneath an obliterating highlight, whereas one essential scene of violence takes place in darkness and behind a pillar. In each instances, the lighting works to hide the story, with out including new which means. 

Amidst this drab panorama, each actors do their finest. I referred earlier to Washington’s excellence with line supply advisedly: He’s made, late within the present, to feign a seizure in a second that doesn’t land, and the blocking of his last scene, wherein the actor mutters to the ceiling whereas mendacity on his again, equally thuds. When upright and addressing the countrymen he’s amongst however not actually of, he has that acquainted brash power, as if trying by means of sheer power of will to maneuver previous the truth that he’s of one other race than all of his friends. And Washington’s preliminary chemistry with Osborne, taking part in his spouse, is powerful sufficient, regardless of a placing distinction in age, that their later scenes coruscate with a painful sense of betrayal. Certainly, these scenes capitalize on all 70 of Washington’s years on this Earth, as he looms over Desdemona and speaks with an authority his misguided beliefs haven’t earned.

That Washingtonian authority demonstrates the manufacturing’s one massive concept — to position two massive stars on the middle of the stage and belief that their expertise and charisma will carry the day. And, for essentially the most half, they do; no fan of Washington or of Gyllenhaal will go away disillusioned within the actors. Leon lets his two stars prepare dinner, however hasn’t stocked the manufacturing with something to present what they’re doing any taste.

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