This blistering ‘Othello’ is the best Shakespeare production at this year's Stratford Festival

Shakespeare’s greatest villain may not be the title role in this tragedy. But make no mistake: he is its central character. 

It’s Iago who plants seeds of doubt in Othello’s mind. It’s Iago who leads the Moorish general into falsely believing that his wife, Desdemona, is unfaithful. It’s Iago who quietly, sadistically tightens the screws, ensnaring his victims like a python would its prey, leading Othello toward his undoing. 

And in Evan Buliung, director Haysam Kadri has found a bone-chilling antagonist for his blistering, period-set revival, running at the Stratford Festival’s Tom Patterson Theatre. 

Buliung’s Iago is like a manipulative chess player: Venice and Cyprus are his chessboard; his compatriots are merely his pawns; and everything, for him, is like a game. 

But what makes Buliung’s performance especially terrifying is his charisma. W.H. Auden, the British-American writer and literary critic, once argued that most actors aren’t naturally convincing as Iago “because they act sinister, like regular villains.” This interpretation renders Othello as more of a pathetic fool than a tragic hero. If Iago is so obviously menacing, how can Othello so easily believe his ensign’s claims that Desdemona is having an affair with his lieutenant, Cassio, when the only shred of evidence that exists is that Cassio is in possession of Desdemona’s handkerchief (planted by Iago, with the help of his wife, Emilia)? 

Buliung’s Iago, however, is anything but sinister in his outward appearance. It doesn’t matter that the evidence he offers, when trying to prove Desdemona’s infidelity, would completely crumble under any scrutiny. What does matter is how he presents his case. And Buliung’s Iago is so charming, so seemingly sincere — in the presence of Othello, he coos softly, feigning loyalty and subservience — that it’s easy to understand why Othello accepts his word as the truth. 

Kadri also brilliantly shows us the various other sides to Shakespeare’s villain. When Buliung delivers his soliloquies, Siobhán Sleath’s frosty lighting collapses in on itself. It’s as if we’re entering Iago’s mind. Uninhibited and alone with his thoughts, what we experience is the personification of pure evil, his words curdled with undiluted hatred. 

Buliung, without a doubt, anchors this “Othello.” But surrounding him, and supporting him, is as fine a cast of Shakespearean actors as you’ll find at Stratford this season. 

As the play’s eponymous character, André Sills lays bare Othello’s descent into paranoia. When he first emerges, his military commander is a strong-willed leader, confidently strutting across the stage and unfazed by the overt racist remarks thrown his way. But when doubt enters his mind over his wife’s loyalty, this strength quickly weakens. His hands quiver by his side, his fingers constantly wipe his brow and his sturdy gait turns into a compromised shuffle.

Like Iago, Kadri also offers us a glimpse into Othello’s mind. As the Moorish general delivers his speeches, his innermost fears manifest as hallucinations on stage. And when Othello is almost completely undone, at a point of no return, we see him imagining Cassio and Desdemona together behind his back, his vivid imagination blurring with reality. 

This, however, couldn’t be further from the truth. Krystin Pellerin, in a beautifully nuanced turn that marks her most significant Shakespearean role since her deceptively sinister Lady Macbeth a decade ago, offers a soft and gentle Desdemona who is completely honest to her core.

She’s contrasted by Jessica B. Hill’s Emilia, whose moral and feminist awakening halfway through the play culminates with a fiery, fourth-act monologue that grounds Kadri’s production. 

If Jordin Hall and Rylan Wilkie, respectively, are less compelling as Cassio and Roderigo, whom Iago manipulates like a parasite would its host, it can be chalked up to the inherent passiveness of these characters and how they were written. 

Kadri places the action on Brian Dudkiewicz dark, brooding set, with Gothic arches that are raised and lowered from the stage. There’s something about this image that suggests a sacrosanct cathedral. But it’s also an image that has been perverted, with Sleath’s lighting designs flooding the stage with the glowing red embers of hell. 

Sometimes, Kadri’s production gets too wrapped up in its own intensity. In the first half, some of his directorial interventions — the shifts in perspective, a slo-mo sequence, actors climbing out of trapped doors — feel as if Kadri is flooring the gas pedal with abandon, when the play itself already has sufficient built-in momentum.

Later, in the second half, particularly in the show’s final scene, he also oddly chooses to confine the action to the downstage area of the Tom Patterson’s elongated thrust, creating some poor sightlines for the audience seated further upstage. 

But what makes this “Othello” immensely convincing are the performances, led by Buliung’s coolly deceitful Iago, hiding his evil nature behind a winsome smile.

When Othello finally recognizes his folly, he confronts his ensign, demanding why “he hath thus ensnared my soul and body.” The Moor never learns of Iago’s true motivations. (Is it out of jealousy? Rage? Evil for pure evil’s sake?) Neither do we.

But what we do learn is how Iago goes about his campaign of destruction: so stealthily, so insidiously that it’s enough to leave you shuddering in its wake.