If Othello is a tragedy, the new Othello on Broadway—starring Denzel Washington as Othello, Jake Gyllenhaal as Iago, with tickets going for around a thousand dollars; y’know, that one—didn’t get the memo.

As Cassio, the handsome lieutenant that Othello has promoted above Iago, Andrew Burnap makes the most solid effort to put something behind the words, but he’s hardly the play’s engine. That combustive energy has to come from the poisonous plotter,

The lean and charismatic Washington looks fit as a fiddle for love or war, but you don’t feel much of a sexual connection between Othello and Desdemona as Washington goes for a more