Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal will star in a Broadway production of “Othello” next year, setting up what is sure to be one of the hottest tickets of the 2024-2025 theater season.
Kenny Leon, who won a Tony Award in 2014 for directing a revival of “A Raisin in the Sun” that starred Washington, will direct the production — the 22nd Broadway staging of “Othello” since 1751, according to the Internet Broadway Database. Leon also directed Washington’s Tony-winning performance in a 2010 production of “Fences.”
Washington, an enormously successful film actor with two Academy Awards, for “Glory” and “Training Day,” has starred in five previous Broadway plays, most recently a 2018 revival of “The Iceman Cometh.”
Gyllenhaal, also best known for his film career (“Brokeback Mountain,” the upcoming “Road House” remake), has starred in three previous Broadway shows, most recently a 2019 monologue called “A Life,” which was paired with “Sea Wall” for an evening of one-acts.
In “Othello,” one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, Washington, 69, will play the title character, a general driven mad by jealousy. Gyllenhaal, 43, will play Iago, the story’s villain, who persuades Othello to question his wife’s fidelity. The role of Othello’s wife, Desdemona, has not yet been cast.
The revival will be produced by Brian Anthony Moreland (“The Wiz”); the show is scheduled to open in the spring of 2025 at an unspecified Shubert Theater.
The last Broadway production of “Othello” was in 1982, and starred James Earl Jones as Othello and Christopher Plummer as Iago.