[In the following review of the 2001 Public Theater staging of Othello directed by Doug Hughes, Simon faults Hughes's casting and interpretive decisions, claiming that they obscured the tragic grandeur of Shakespeare's play, burying its loftier, philosophical qualities among the sordidness of domestic drama.]

What a chance for timeliness was missed by Doug Hughes's staging of Othello! By reducing the play to domestic drama (which on one level it is), the Public Theater has deprived it of its political and metaphysical half: the war between civilized goodness (Venice, Christianity, order) and barbarous evil (the Turks, treachery, chaos). That may have cut too close to the bone and required a larger, grander production than the impoverished one here. But how sad to see a shatteringly relevant historical and philosophical clash shrunk to a chamber piece of mere personal conflict, and even that poorly executed.

The casting of the principals demands a keen aesthetic sensibility. Whereas it is right to give nearly central importance to Iago, he should not physically dominate Othello, yet the hulking Liev Schreiber as Iago does precisely that. By making Iago smaller and physiognomically more trustworthy, the power of unperspicuous, insidious evil is more graphically highlighted. Othello, though decently acted by Keith David, needs to be of more heroic stature, more purblind nobility, and, eventually, of more pitiable, poetic grandeur than mere competence can summon. An even greater problem is Desdemona, surely the most demanding female role in the Shakespeare canon, a role of feminine and human perfection, neither of which the visually and histrionically ordinary Kate Forbes can approximate.

It is a costly mistake to have a Roderigo (Christopher Evan Welch) more interesting than Cassio (Jay Goede); to turn Lodovico (Dan Snook) into an immature and prissily spoken hunk; to cast an Emilia (Becky Ann Baker) who looks more like Iago's sexless aunt than his jealousy-provoking wife; and to give us a Bianca (Natacha Roi) more desirable than Desdemona.

Schreiber does wring a good deal out of Iago, but much of it is literally and figuratively misdirected. Although lechery for Desdemona may be a minor cause of his intrigues, directing him to clasp, cradle, and fondle her consolingly is socially and dramatically unacceptable. And the final image of Iago—already reduced to cowering from a mighty blow of Othello's Notung-like sword—left standing tall above the three corpses of his making is absurd. What's called for is his being dragged off to punishment. For him to start twitching in what looks like remorse as the lights go down is even more preposterous.