SOURCE: Feingold, Michael. “Less Is Moor.” Village Voice 46, no. 50 (18 December 2001): 71.

In the following review of Doug Hughes's 2001 Othello staged at New York City's Public Theater, Feingold acknowledges the overall merit of this production, but finds its passion “distressingly contained.”

Greed is the drama critic's prevailing sin. Not greed for power or money—though none of us would complain if the artists all did exactly what we told them, and offered us bushels of cash to praise them for doing it—but greed for greatness. Offer me passable, I want good; give me good, I demand excellent; grant me excellent, and I say, “What ever happened to sublime?”

Take Doug Hughes's staging of Othello. It is a solid, handsome, intelligent, and skillfully acted production, at which I had a good time. And now I shall prove almost as ungrateful as Iago, who had a good job and hated his...