Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal to star in Othello on Broadway
Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal will star in a Broadway revival of Shakespeare’s Othello in the 2024 to 25 Broadway season.
The drama, expected to open in the spring of 2025 at an unnamed venue, will be staged by Kenny Leon. Washington will take on the title role, with Gyllenhaal as Iago. Further casting will be announced.
Leon directed Washington in the 2010 revival of August Wilson’s Fences and the 2014 production of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Washington’s last Shakespeare production on Broadway was Julius Caesar; he also appeared in Coriolanus and Richard III at the Delacorte Theater for the New York Shakespeare Festival. This will be Gyllenhaal’s first New York stage encounter with the Bard.
The last Broadway production of Othello was in 1982, with James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer heading the cast. It had a starry Sam Gold-directed revival at New York Theatre Workshop, led by Daniel Oyelowo and Daniel Craig.
Pre-pandemic, Gyllenhaal was due to star in the West End transfer of Sunday in the Park with George at the Savoy Theatre. That production was postponed indefinitely by lockdowns, though we still live in hope.
