Theater News

Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal to Star in Othello on Broadway

Kenny Leon will direct the Shakespearean drama.

othello

Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal will star in a Broadway revival of Shakespeare’s Othello in the 2024-25 season.

The drama will be staged by Kenny Leon. It is expected to open in the spring of 2025.

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 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.