Four Reasons We Can't Wait for Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal to Go Head to Head in Othello

Shakespeare’s Othello is a play overflowing with passion, rage and intrigue. In the upcoming Broadway revival, it will also have two of the most magnetic leading men around pitted against one another: Denzel Washington as the fatally flawed Othello and Jake Gyllenhaal as the plotting Iago. The Kenny Leon-directed production begins performances at the Barrymore Theatre on February 24, 2025 with an official opening set for March 23 and a closing date of June 8. Here’s why we’re predicting the latest take on the tragedy will make for a triumphant production.

Denzel Washington Commands the Stage
Two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington plays the kind of men you would follow into battle. From Malcolm X to Steve Biko to Rubin "Hurricane" Carter to any number of commanders and captains, Washington excels at playing characters containing, or failing to contain, the violent storms brewing within them. Perfect for the general who compares the workings of his mind to the “icy current and compulsive course” of the Black Sea. And Washington is no stranger to Shakespeare, having starred as Brutus in Julius Caesar on Broadway as well as played Richard III with the Public Theater and Don Pedro in Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing (also starring 2025 Broadway star Keanu Reeves). Most recently, he was agony incarnate in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth—one of the most artfully effective Shakespeare films of recent years. Before conquering Hollywood, Washington played Othello while studying at Fordham University. Fordham professor Robert Stone—who, decades prior, had acted with Paul Robeson in Othello on Broadway—called Washington’s the best Othello he’d ever seen. “He has something which even Robeson didn’t have … not only beauty but love, hatred, majesty, violence.” Terrible as it sounds, It will be magnificent to see him in ruins.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Iago: A Blue-Eyed Monster
Jake Gyllenhaal and his baby-faced smile promise a particularly devastating twist of the knife from Shakespeare’s back-stabbing Iago. Over the past 10 years, the actor has been making regular visits to Broadway—first in Nick Payne’s nonlinear two-hander Constellations (opposite Ruth Wilson), then as Stephen Sondheim’s most famous anti-hero Georges Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George (opposite Annaleigh Ashford). Just before the pandemic shutdown, he even proved he could command a stage solo in Payne’s one-act A Life (Tom Sturridge kept Gyllenhaal company, performing the Simon Stephens one-act Sea Wall in tandem). He’s a character actor deceptively packaged as a classic leading man, which is just the kind of All About Eve dynamic you want baked into Othello’s psychopathic, power-hungry villain. And with the impregnable Denzel Washington as the target of his revenge, sparks are going to fly at the Barrymore.

Kenny Leon, a Master of Classics, Takes Over the Barrymore
Kenny’s his name and revivals are his game. Kenny Leon has led four productions to the Best Revival of a Play Tony Award—Fences, A Raisin in the Sun, A Soldier’s Play and Topdog/Underdog—winning one directing Tony for himself for the 2014 revival of A Raisin in the Sun (his second production of the play on Broadway) that starred his forthcoming Moor of Venice, Denzel Washington. He’s proven himself a master of unmuffling existing texts so their messages ring out to the rear balcony, and more often than not, his chosen properties mine the complexities of being Black in America. Othello, on the contrary, takes us to Venice, but familiar racial tensions saturate the story of vengeance and manipulation, making it a fitting Shakespeare debut for the director. Audiences can also make an event of a return trip to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre after seeing Leon’s production of Our Town, opening October 10 at the same venue. Two classics, both alike in dignity—and without much else in common at all.

Stories of Woe: A Season of Shakespearean Tragedies
It’s a packed season for Shakespeare lovers in New York. Before Othello, Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor are at the center of what sounds like a Gen Z youthquake in Sam Gold’s Romeo + Juliet; and next month, lifelong Bard ambassador Kenneth Branagh comes to The Shed with King Lear. That’s a lot of tragedy. Taken together, the plays present a gripping, bleak vision of an unraveling world where love, idealism and integrity are undone by pettiness, jealousy, ambition and betrayal. As ever, these 400-year-old works present an opportunity to confront our own deepest fears and desires, struggles and vulnerabilities. And after all that, thank goodness Shakespeare in the Park is back in 2025 with the topsy-turvy fun of Twelfth Night.