André Sills, Krystin Pellerin and Evan Buliung in Othello.DARIANE SANCHE PHOTOGRAPHE WWW./Supplied
- Title: Othello
- Written by: William Shakespeare
- Performed by: André Sills, Evan Buliung, Krystin Pellerin, Jordin Hall, Jessica B. Hill
- Director: Haysam Kadri
- Company: Stratford Festival
- Venue: Tom Patterson Theatre
- City: Stratford, Ont.
- Year: Runs until Sept. 27
Critic’s Pick
Othello has always been brutal.
But in director Haysam Kadri’s production at the Stratford Festival, equal parts brilliant and bleak, the play is newly visceral – a pressure cooker building to an unavoidable pop. Fight scenes bleed with thick stage blood; sequences of domestic violence reverberate with pain; racist insults toward a certain Moorish general echo long beyond their initial utterances.
But Kadri also manages to tap into the unlikely humour in William Shakespeare’s script – the wickedness so over-the-top that, in places, it’s chillingly funny. Kadri’s production, led by André Sills and Evan Buliung, finds a refreshing amount of nuance in a play about flawed characters doing flawed things, and while the work is excruciating in spots, it’s also impossible to look away. Kadri’s Othello is Shakespeare realized at the highest calibre, a worthy complement to the similarly excellent (albeit much lighter) comedy playing on the Tom Patterson Theatre stage this season.
Set designer Brian Dudkiewicz suggests a world of broken trust with a collection of large wishbones suspended from the ceiling of the intimate theatre. The arches float above the stage, each snapped in a slightly different spot – in this way, Dudkiewicz stuffs Othello with visual tension from its very first moments. Which way might the bones break?
And then we meet Othello.
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Sills has spent his career working toward playing one of Shakespeare’s most famously difficult characters on a Stratford Festival stage. In his 12 seasons at the fest, he’s reliably been among the most engaging actors in a given ensemble, a gifted orator with a booming, formidable voice. In some ways, Sills’s Othello has felt inevitable since he understudied the role at the festival close to two decades ago.
When Sills stepped onstage on Friday, a small, secret smile on his lips, the satisfaction was evident as the actor soaked in the moment. But soon enough, the performer locked in, conjuring a barbed, heartbroken Othello with crazed eyes and a shattered psyche.
Indeed, Sills’s Othello spits out his words as if performing an exorcism, utterly blind to the viperous Iago’s betrayal as he spirals into madness. The performance is all-consuming and masterful, a long time coming for the actor, and just as powerful as one might expect from the festival mainstay.
Director Haysam Kadri’s production at the Stratford Festival is a pressure cooker building to an unavoidable pop.Supplied
Buliung’s Iago is no less captivating, though the actor has more opportunities to tap at the edges of the play’s humour – the almost cartoonishly evil tactics Iago uses to exact his revenge on Othello. Iago’s series of spotlighted soliloquies, punctuated by Cheshire Cat smiles and throaty laughs from Buliung, are among Othello’s highlights. Those speeches feel like a whispered conversation between the actor and the audience – a sacred exchange of knowing glances and quick asides as Iago’s web of lies tightens around him.
Together, Buliung and Sills cook up a ragged, volatile dynamic between the two men, culminating in a deliciously twisty Othello in which no one character is spared from villainy. Iago is a scoundrel, of course, but Othello is no saint, either: His punishment of wife Desdemona (Krystin Pellerin) is unspeakably cruel, so much so that no amount of deception from Iago can explain away his actions.
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Pellerin’s Desdemona, dressed in flowing, ethereal fabrics by costume designer Gillian Gallow, stirs the soul in such a way that makes Othello somehow even more difficult to stomach. Pellerin doesn’t shy away from the woman’s conflict – the simultaneous duty and desire she feels toward her husband – but plays the role with so many layers that, in places, Desdemona is able to tell the audience one story, and Othello another.
Meanwhile, Jessica B. Hill, so wonderfully buoyant as Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, brings comparable depth to Emilia, Iago’s wife and Desdemona’s confidant. Hill’s performance in the final, soul-crushing half-hour of the play is particularly affecting, as Emilia confronts Othello in the aftermath of a grisly murder.
Jordin Hall, who plays Cassio – the man making a cuckold of Othello, or so says Iago – enjoys a few similarly strong scenes, particularly one which sees the character drunkenly fight Roderigo (Rylan Wilkie).
Kadri’s Othello is Shakespeare realized at the highest calibre, writes Aisling Murphy.Supplied
None of this is to say Kadri’s production is without faults: Dudkiewicz’s set inexplicably riffs on the architecture of the company’s much larger Festival Theatre, and is occasionally a touch rickety. A few sightline issues telegraph Kadri’s relative inexperience directing for the Tom Patterson Theatre’s finicky thrust stage. Siobhán Sleath’s lighting design, while mostly modern and elegant, occasionally goes overboard in its embrace of neon colours and contemporary effects.
But on the whole, Othello soars. Its cast is airtight and its director boasts a keen understanding of the inner mechanics of Shakespeare’s tragedy. While, yes, the play has always been brutal – for its actors, for its audience and, most specifically, for the characters at its centre – Kadri’s treatment sharpens the text to a killing edge and renders Othello an unmissable focal point of the 2026 Stratford Festival.