The Best Part of Denzel Washington’s Othello Is the Kanye West Song
This article initially appeared in Vulture’s theater newsletter Stage Whisperer.
Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal’s Othello was ravaged by critics last week, and rightly so, but nobody seemed to notice the best part of the whole show — probably because it happened after all the actors left the stage. Critics specifically (and rightly) called out director Kenny Leon for setting this new Othello in “the Near Future” for seemingly no reason. “What this is meant to teach us about the rules of this onstage universe, who can say?” writes Vulture’s Sara Holdren. But despite the ridiculousness of this attempted ESP, there is one legitimately forward-thinking moment. Upon experiencing it, I wondered, Could this be the future of Shakespeare? But it isn’t a moment involving the show’s stars or even the words of Shakespeare himself. It is the Sunday Services cover of Kanye West’s song “Ultralight Beam” that plays when audiences exit the theater.
The song comes in slowly, after the actors have all left the stage post-bows, and if you don’t know this version, it’s easy to miss it entirely. I found myself singing along without quite knowing what I was singing along to (and Shazam-ing it is impossible, since the theater locks up the audience’s phones in Yondrs). Many of the audience members didn’t seem to know what it was at all. But then it hit: They are playing a gospel version of one of Ye’s best-known songs, less than a month after he punished his ex-wife by releasing a “collaboration” between their underage daughter North West and Diddy. It’s difficult to read the choice as anything other than an intentional ploy to get the audience to compare Othello, who we’ve just seen murder his wife due to his own ego, to current Ye. He’s too loaded of a figure to invoke right now without intention. Ye is an egomaniac, of course, and also a Black man who has experienced real racism at the hand of the white Establishment. He’s has all but tortured his wife (now ex-wife) Kim Kardashian in public. The comparison is not obvious, but it’s legible and interesting, which is more than you can say for the rest of this production.
It’s not the first time pop songs have been used in this way recently. Earlier this season, director Kenny Leon underscored his production of Our Town’s bows to “What About Us?,” by P!nk. (That decision was ridiculed on social media and the song left the show early in previews.) But while P!nk felt out of touch and a little cringey, “Ultralight Beam” dares to increase our understanding of the play and connects it to modern-day Ye without forcing Washington to rap “Through the Wire” in headgear onstage. That stands in contrast to the nonspecific post-contemporary “Near Future” that Leon set this Othello in. That setting does nothing to inform the audience’s experience of the show — the characters do not appear changed because they exist in modern times, just the costumes. On the other hand, the inclusion of this song can actually bring us to draw conclusions as to how Shakespeare’s universal work might apply now: What would a modern Othello look like? Maybe it would look like Ye, forcing Desdemona to wear increasingly skimpy outfits in public as some kind of humiliation ritual for the crime of femininity instead of simply killing her.
Still, it’s disappointing that a lot of the audience members are not going to catch this moment. The fact that Ye’s (extremely recognizable) voice isn’t on the song means that it sounds like any other modern gospel track, particularly if you’re not regularly listening to Life of Pablo. And it’s probably fair to say that many of the (old, white) audience members who choose to pay for $900 tickets are not, in fact, listening to Life of Pablo. It’s an interesting choice but also a missed opportunity — a show that is purportedly set in the future isn’t forcing audience members to contend with the “now.”
Related