Othello's Wife Gives Her Side of the Story.

The irreverent director Peter Sellars has said he thinks ''Othello'' is a terrible play, but does he need to work so hard to prove it to us? In his high-tech 2009 staging of the tragedy, he stuffed Philip Seymour Hoffman's Iago into an ill-fitting green sweater, and reduced that masterful agent of chaos to a mundanely bitter cuckold overshadowed by a bed of television sets. For the current White Light Festival at Lincoln Center, Mr. Sellars brought a similarly minimalist, presentational style to ''Desdemona,'' a perplexing reimagining of the title character that comes off as an elegant lecture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]