“Jealousy; It is the green-ey’d monster.” So says Othello’s covetous and ambitious Iago (played like an Evil Captain America by Jonno Roberts). The heft of 
Shakespeare is this: when you hear an oft-used idiom in one of Will’s plays, it is likely the seminal use. “Pomp and circumstance,” “wear my heart upon my sleeve,” “thereby hangs a tale,” all originally penned in Othello are part of the lexicon of today.
Just as the words remain relevant, so do the themes. It is easy to see why DC’s Shakespeare Theater Company chose to revive Othello in 2016. Shakespeare so deftly captured the human condition that the play is as contemporary now as it was 400 years ago. Watching the tragedy unfold on Riccardo Hernandez’s spare stage with Emily Rebholz’s depressed costuming felt like watching the primary election play out on CNN. The Moorish General, portrayed with intensity by Faran Tahir, might have been named Everyman – his character flaws residing in each of us: We are victims of insecurity. We can be easily led. We can misplace trust. We can be quick to anger. Othello is a voting public whipped into a frenzy of ire and suspicion as a result of half-truths, insinuation, and slander, all delivered in a cloak of benevolent camaraderie. Any of the candidates could be Iago, manipulating our collective emotions.
Iago is the father of all Supervillains, whose viperous pot-stirring leads to onstage carnage rivaling a Verdi opera. “Iago” takes many forms: campaign mud-slinging, Real Housewife backstabbing, ISIS beheading videos. Sometimes Iago is simply the devil inside, from which none are immune. Insecurity is 
universal. Othello is celebrated for battlefield prowess, yet utterly vulnerable when it comes to personal relationships. Like a thread irretrievably pulled, impotence and doubt fell the great general, driving him to a barbaric act of violence, which in turn cascades into greater horror. Good people dispatched by deceit and despair. We saw it in late-1500s Cypress just as we see it in 2016 Kalamazoo, Michigan. While some of Iago’s delivery strays into disconcerting slapstick, the audience laughed willingly, grateful for a respite from the diabolical.
The intention of director Ron Daniels was at times confusing. The banal militaristic design suited the dark tale, but did little to visually grip the audience through a long, talky play. Casting the traditionally black “Moor” as a more swarthy Middle Easterner was an obvious contemporary choice. But depicting the Muslim at prayer immediately prior to strangling his white wife for an (imagined) offense of honor left this particular audience member feeling uncomfortable. At a time when our own political rhetoric falsely
paints an entire religion with murderous intent, it seems these images of universal Muslim violence should be tempered, not amplified. Finally, as a woman, enraged by the ease and speed with which Othello accepts his wife’s infidelity based solely on hearsay, I would have preferred to see greater struggle from Tahir before stabbing his own heart upon the green talons.
At the end of the day, The Shakespeare Theater Company’s Othello won’t make you comfortable, but it will make you think. About good, about evil, about the buttons we all possess that if pressed can drive us to madness. About one that loved not wisely but too well. And about Iago, still evil, still here today.
Othello is playing at The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Sydney Harman Hall (610 F Street, NW, Washington, DC 20004) February 23 through March 27, 2016. Running time: two hours and forty minutes with one fifteen minute intermission. For information or tickets, call the box office at (202) 547-1122, or click here.
Stage images credit Scott Suchman
