The play may bear Othello’s name, but the new production at the Shakespeare Theatre Company is Iago’s. From the moment Jonno Roberts first appears on the nearly empty stage, the audience’s entire attention is his. Menacing, manipulative, and at times raging, he controls the stage, keeping an entire audience on the edge of their seats, even during some of his longer monologues.

Iago is a menacing figure, frighteningly subtle when he needs to be, yet containing a deep well of anger. Few actors can make Shakespeare’s curses resonate with the emotion, anger, and disdain inherent in contemporary four-letter Anglo-Saxonisms. That Roberts does so consistently is all the more credit to his acting.