We’re speaking about religion. Final December, simply earlier than Christmas, actor Denzel Washington was baptized and licensed as a minister, and so it hasn’t taken lengthy, chatting about his return to Broadway enjoying the title position in Othello, for dialog to show to issues of perception. Not non secular, per se; Shakespeare’s nice tragedy activates themes of affection and jealousy and betrayal. Maybe, I muse, Othello’s option to belief the proof of his eyes—a planted handkerchief—over his harmless spouse Desdemona’s protests that she has by no means strayed, is a sort of lack of religion, a misguided embrace of rationality over spirit. “Nicely, certain, he desires proof,” pipes up Jake Gyllenhaal, who co-stars within the manufacturing as Iago, planter of the aforementioned handkerchief, “and, Iago retains main him again to the handkerchief—look, look!—however the one cause he can manipulate Othello that method is that they have a bond. They’ve fought collectively, trusted one another with their lives. He is aware of it is a man with an incredible sense of religion and love.”
“Mm-hm,” provides Washington. In the meantime, he’s picked up a thick binder and is flicking by means of it. We’re in a small midtown workplace a couple of minutes’ stroll from the Barrymore Theatre, the place the 2 actors might be performing in Othello by means of June 8—one of many starriest outings in what’s shaping as much as be a really starry Broadway season. In an hour or so, the pair is due on the theater for a gathering with the play’s director, Broadway veteran Kenny Leon, who staged a revival of Our City on the Barrymore simply final fall. Rain is pelting down exterior as we chat, and Gyllenhaal appears to be maintaining half a watch on it as he continues ruminating. “However Iago additionally is aware of, Desdemona—that’s one thing new for Othello. Which makes him susceptible.”
“He’s not skilled placing all his playing cards on the desk for one lady,” Washington chimes in, nonetheless centered on his binder.
“He’s been at struggle,” provides Gyllenhaal.
“Seven years of struggle,” provides Washington, citing the play. “In order that’s his biography, proper there. That’s the place he’s comfy. Battle.”
I really feel like I’m in school. I say so. Gyllenhaal laughs. “That is what we do. It’s one of the best—going round and round, making an attempt to determine, who’re these individuals? What makes them do what they do?”
“Ah!” Washington holds up his binder. He’s discovered what he was in search of: a web page from his notes on the script, with a line of Othello’s scrawled in all caps: if she be false, heaven mocks itself. He flashes his iconic megawatt smile. “Speaking about religion—that’s truly the very first thing I wrote down,” he says. Then, from beneath his ballcap, he fixes me with an ardent gaze and says the road aloud, falling into character. “If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself! I’ll not imagine it!” I don’t really feel like I’m in school anymore. A unique, dreamier smile performs over Washington’s face as he quotes from elsewhere within the play. “For know Iago, however that I like the mild Desdemona…”
Returning to himself, Washington grins, varieties a finger pistol and goals it at Gyllenhaal. “Studying my traces! Lastly catching up with this man!”
In a way of talking, Gyllenhaal began studying his Iago traces seven months earlier than rehearsals for Othello started in New York. “I’d by no means accomplished Shakespeare,” he explains. “And also you get that decision and it’s, not solely do I wish to do that, I have to do that. However actually, I didn’t know: can I do it? It scared me.”
Thus Gyllenhaal launched into a five-day-a-week, two or three-hour-a-day Shakespeare coaching routine not totally dissimilar, I counsel to him, from the method of entering into combating type for, say, Highway Home. “Kind of…” he assents, considerably skeptical of the analogy. “You’re studying a language. And that high layer of, ‘what does this imply?’ you will get by means of fairly quick, however then the phrases, they’re so intense, what he’s truly saying—you will get misplaced in them. And the one factor I’m involved about,” Gyllenhaal continues, “is being current and in a position to hearken to one among biggest actors ever once we’re onstage.”
“And I’m seven months behind,” quips Washington, who—at time of writing, every week earlier than opening night time of previews—nonetheless wasn’t off-book.
“However you’re used to this, the phrases don’t get in your method,” notes Gyllenhaal. He glances over at me, then turns again towards Washington, gazing at him with not slightly marvel. “He can say his traces like, , like they’re simply popping out of his mouth…” Nice performing, Gyllenhaal will later comment, is usually a matter of doing as close to as doable to nothing.
“Typically you’ll have this type of explosion of inspiration from the phrase once you hear it,” says Gyllenhaal. “And generally you retain it so simple as you presumably can.”
“Nicely,” Washington affords with a shrug. “generally the road is simply Shakespeare’s model of ‘get out of right here.’”
For Washington, Othello is a homecoming. And a reunion. Twenty years in the past, he performed Brutus in a lauded Broadway manufacturing of Julius Caesar; his itch to do extra Shakespeare wasn’t glad by his flip enjoying the title position in Joel Coen’s 2021 movie The Tragedy of Macbeth. Within the interim, Washington had struck up a fruitful collaboration with director Leon, with whom he’d labored on the Broadway performs Fences and A Raisin within the Solar. It so occurred that Leon was contemporary off mounting a manufacturing of Hamlet for Shakespeare within the Park—solely his second staging of the Bard, after profitable the 2020 Obie for his path of A lot Ado About Nothing—when Washington received it into his head to take a contemporary crack at Othello, a component he first performed half a century in the past, as a 20-year-old drama pupil.
