The "Othello" that opens the Public Theater's Free Shakespeare in the Park summer season is straightforward. It's in Elizabethan dress, not contemporary duds; there's no #MeToo or Black Lives Matter theme. In fact, because Chukwudi Iwuji, who plays Othello, is not the only black cast member, the race elements undergirding it are downplayed. Instead, Tony Award-winning director Ruben Santiago-Hudson gives us an intelligent, cool reading of a play that can be intense and hotheaded. The story he's telling is about the moral corruption of a good man.
It's the antihero Iago (Corey Stoll), of course, who does the corrupting. He wants to take revenge on Othello, both because he believes he wasn't promoted fast enough and because he thinks the general slept with his wife Emilia. Stoll's easy diction makes Shakespeare's language sound as clear as American English and his crack comic timing makes a surprising number of his lines funny — though perhaps too funny, since his take gives the production the fleet feel of a comedy, instead of the gathering doom of a tragedy.
Most interesting, Stoll's Iago is less a puppetmaster than a gladhanding, gaslighting politician. He's not a manipulative genius, but a regular-guy narcissist who carefully thinks about how to get what he wants. His foil should be Othello. But Chukwudi Iwuji's fresh, open performance makes Othello seem like a naif, instead of a war-tested soldier. We are not surprised he can be conned.
Instead, Iago's counterweight is his wife Emilia, played with canny warmth by Allison Wright. Emilia is usually something of a mystery; she at first seems to help her husband harm Othello's wife Desdemona (Heather Lind), and then suddenly makes a great sacrifice on her behalf. But director Santiago-Hudson carefully sets up the motivations of his characters, and in Wright's hands, Emilia's trajectory is clear: She doesn't quite take her husband seriously, but when she understands what he's done, her own guilt and moral compass push her to come to Desdemona's defense.
The interplay between Emilia's growing strength as she grasps the true situation and Iago's diminishment as he realizes he has failed, make the last few scenes especially wrenching. Iago often steals "Othello," but it is intriguing to give this sort of weight to Emila. This production elevates her, so that she becomes one of Shakespeare's memorable women.
Othello, by William Shakespeare at the Public Theater's Delacorte Theater in Central Park; directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson through June 24.