Kenny Leon’s ‘Othello’ on Broadway is more modern than you think

Two decades ago, Kenny Leon discovered universal themes in Shakespeare. Now, those themes retain their truth as he directs Othello with a fresh take.

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Kenny Leon and actor Denzel Washington share such a potent professional bond that they’ve vowed to work together every three or four years moving forward. After Broadway versions of Fences in 2010 and A Raisin in the Sun in 2014, Othello — with the Tony and Oscar-winning star in the titular role and Leon directing — is their latest collaboration. Officially opened as of March 23, Othello, running through June 8 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, has set a new record for the highest weekly gross for a Broadway play, taking in $2,818,297 for the first eight performances. 

Leon first directed a Shakespeare production over 20 years ago — in 2003 and at a different time in his life. It was at the now-defunct Georgia Shakespeare Festival in Atlanta, where Carolyn Cook and Chris Kayser played Beatrice and Benedick. “They made it beautiful, but I did not know what the hell I was doing,” says Leon. 

Sixteen years later, he had another chance. He was hired by The Public Theatre to mount a Shakespeare in the Park version of the same play starring Danielle Brooks. He set it in modern day Georgia, right after Stacey Abrams lost her first governor’s election. “It was great,” he says. “I put her name on a house in the [play] to show it was in Georgia. I learned then you could set Shakespeare anywhere.”

At the end of 2023, when he and Washington discussed future projects, Leon realized the actor was free in 2025. They decided to stage Othello, found a producer and rounded up the rest of the cast. Before they decided to work together on the project, Leon had just finished staging Hamlet in Central Park, again for The Public Theatre. Growing up as someone who wasn’t really a Shakespeare fan, he learned late in his life to appreciate what made the Bard’s prose so impactful. “These are 500-year-old plays, but it’s all about the universal themes [in them],” he says. 

Leon’s passion and affinity for producing August Wilson’s work helped with that. “[Wilson and Shakespeare] are in the same army,” he says. “The 10 August Wilson plays I did in Atlanta helped me understand character development, plot structure and poetry. All that August Wilson had in his plays, Shakespeare had in his.” 

Othello follows Iago, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who vows revenge on his general, Othello, the moor of Venice, after being passed over for a promotion. To do so, he sets out to convince Othello that his wife, Desdemona, has been unfaithful.  

It’s the right timing for Leon, not just because it’s a significant challenge but because he wanted a Black American to get a shot at doing this. Leon refers to Othello as the only play Shakespeare wrote about race, so to have a Black artist stage it means a lot. The audience gets to see what the world looks like through Leon’s eyes, someone growing up in the American South. This is the first Broadway staging since 1982, with James Earl Jones in the lead role at the Winter Garden Theatre. 

For Washington, whom Leon calls one of the greatest performers of his generation, Othello is just as much about age as race. “The age difference between Desdemona and Othello is, I think, 40 years in my research. They found pure love that has no boundaries or age or race — that can be destroyed only by other human beings, rumors, jealousy, talk and all the hurt we do each other.”  

With Washington cast, Leon needed to find an Iago. A lot of people could play the role by twirling their mustache, he thought, but the actor who could give it the needed complexity was Gyllenhaal. “We knew each other but had never worked together. I approached him, and he said he wanted to go down that road. These guys don’t need to do this; they don’t need the money. They want to get better as artists and say something with this play.”

As director, Leon was adamant that he didn’t want Othello to be about our governments, armies and educational institutions. He wanted it to be about humanity, so he set the play in the near future: October 2028. Given that time, of course, no one knows who will be in the White House. “I wanted to focus on the people. This play is saying something about us. We are wrestling with humanity with our love and jealousy and life. This is a time in our American lives, set in the American military. This play ends up with people dead — and that is what happens when we don’t lean into the better part of ourselves.” 

From 1990 to 2000, Leon acted as the artistic director of the Alliance Theatre. He then resigned and founded True Colors Theatre Company. His first Broadway gig was in 2004, directing a revival of A Raisin in the Sun at the Barrymore. Most recently, he staged a well-received version of Our Town, also at the Barrymore, with an all-star cast including Jim Parsons, Katie Holmes and Richard Thomas. 

What’s happening in the country now with cutbacks to arts and arts funding gives Leon fuel. He looks at his mother’s life, his grandmother’s life and his great grandmother’s life and the world they lived in, and he realizes that every generation has challenges. 

“So far, we have been able to overcome all of those challenges for hundreds and hundreds of years. You’d hope we’d keep learning and get better with each generation, but this is a time when artists have to be louder and keep writing and directing and doing the plays even against the resistance. We are a threat to some, and it makes me want to keep doing this more. Maybe the answers won’t come from the political arena or the religious arena —  maybe it will come from us and our storytelling. Artists have always had an important place in the evolution of humanity.”  

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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband, Craig.