“Othello,” arguably one of Shakespeare’s darkest tragedies, has no place for laughter.

“Hamlet” has the overbearing and impractical Polonius and Hamlet’s strange antics to lessen the tension at times. “Romeo and Juliet” has the distinctly lighter tone of young love. And in the rest of the tragedies the audience at least gets the benefit of the villain suffering a terrible death. But “Othello” begins in the black of night and only continues to be dark, dark and darker.

The Schorr Family Firehouse Stage in Johnson City is host to Goodwill Theatre Inc. and director Rosemary Hay’s production of William Shakespeare’s “Othello,” the daunting tale of love, passion and jealousy. The cast is led by Rudy Caporaso as Iago and Raymond Roberts as Othello.

The basic plot of “Othello” can be summarized in very few words: two lovers are blissfully married until jealousy insinuates itself into their happiness and leads to terrible tragedy.

“Othello” has very little levity and delves into dark issues such as jealousy, adultery, racism and murder. The central characters are Othello, a black foreigner who is the formidable general of the Venetian army; Desdemona, the daughter of a nobleman who marries Othello and Iago, Othello’s officer who weaves the plot of lies and deceit for no discernible reason.

This particular production has been cut from over three hours long down to two.

While the editing helps to keep the momentum of the play going, it ends up strongly emphasizing that this play is more of Iago’s tale than Othello’s. Iago is typically portrayed as a calm but horrifyingly malicious man whose evil intentions have no explanation, but Caporaso’s portrayal comes off as a bit more frenetic.

The acting was finely tuned to show the distinct difference between Iago’s outward appearance and his inward maliciousness, but Caporaso’s performance was perhaps a bit over-the-top — in some cases garnering laughter.

The unsettling aspect of laughter in “Othello” suggests that there is a certain amount of camaraderie between Iago and the audience — a terrifying thought, as Iago is often considered, even more so than Richard III, as Shakespeare’s most truly evil character.

Aside from Caporaso’s performance, there were a number of very impressive performances by both main and supporting characters.

Roberts’ Othello and Clare O’Malley’s Desdemona were very convincingly in love at the start of the play, which anchored the story by making it clear how far down jealousy can drag something so pure and beautiful.

Both Roberts and O’Malley did an excellent job of becoming their characters and pulling the audience into their troubles — a connection that is largely responsible for the devastating effect this play has on an audience.

Other notable performers were: Ryan Touhey as Roderigo, the lovelorn man who falls prey to Iago’s schemes; Michael Arcesi in the small role of Brabantio, Desdemona’s disappointed father and Sean Bradley as Othello’s lieutenant, Michael Cassio.