Last time I checked, there were not a lot of laughs in Shakespeare’s tragedy about a Moorish general beset by the green-eyed monster. Yet giggles abound in “Othello: The Remix,” a clever and exuberantly performed hip-hop version of the play that opened on Wednesday at the Westside Theater.  If the unlikely combination of hip-hop and Shakespeare rings a bell, it’s because the writer-composers, directors and stars of the show — known as the Q Brothers, GQ and JQ — have concocted this kind of madcap mash-up before. They had an Off Broadway hit back in 1999 with “The Bomb-itty of Errors,” adapted from — well, you can guess — and have written versions of several other Shakespeare plays.  This is the first time they have brought to New York an adaptation of a tragedy into what is essentially a rapped opera, with minimal dialogue. (Coming up: “Hamlet” and “Macbeth.”) But the Q Brothers are smart to play to their strengths. While their version conforms broadly to the original, it is continually infused with impish humor; it’s as much a spoof of “Othello” as it is a serious attempt to translate the play into a contemporary musical idiom.  Wisest move: eliminating Desdemona as an onstage character. Othello (Postell Pringle) here is a musical eminence at the top of his fame and his game (think Jay Z), who falls in love with and marries one of his admirers, Desdemona, part of his chorus. We never see her, but only hear her in a few passages as a disembodied, angelic voice. Given the joshing tone of much of the show, this makes sense, since it would be incongruous to grind the gears at the end by showing Othello murdering his innocent wife. (We only see the pillow he uses to smother her.)  Besides this major structural change — which works much better than you might expect — the Q Brothers stick to the essentials of the story. Iago, played with seething anger by GQ, is a rapper and protégé of Othello who is riled by what he sees as his marginalization when the big boss promotes Cassio (Jackson Doran), whom Iago derides as a white-bread, boy-band poseur, over him. “I’m opening for the opener,” he grouses. “This is just pathetic.”  He sets in motion a plot to instill doubt and jealousy in Othello, playing on the crush that Roderigo, amusingly portrayed by JQ as a technogeek, has on Desdemona. The famous handkerchief here is a bit of gold bling, a necklace that falls into Iago’s hands through the unwitting help of his wife, Emilia, and is discovered in the possession of Cassio, leading to the usual pileup of corpses.  Three of the show’s four actors double or triple in roles, and along with Roderigo, they are generally turned into comic characters. Switching between roles is signified mostly — often delightfully — by having the actors don bibs and, as necessary, wigs. Mr. Doran, for instance, is barely recognizable when he slaps on a red pageboy to play Emilia, whose badgering of Iago for some sexual attention is a running gag.  In addition to the duped nerd Roderigo, JQ is equally funny as Loco Vito, the head of Othello’s record label — First Folio Records — who, in another enjoyable if left-field joke, is obsessed with tennis and makes several oddball references to champions from Boris Becker to Roger Federer. He also plays Cassio’s sometime girlfriend Bianca, a fiery Latina who’s none too pleased with Cassio’s playboy ways as his star ascends.  Only GQ, as Iago (and, briefly, Desdemona’s father Brabantio), and Mr. Pringle as Othello play it mostly straight. While the comedy does ultimately overshadow the tragic dimensions of the story, Mr. Pringle is a commanding, virile presence. His transformation, under Iago’s manipulation, into a monster of sexual insecurity doesn’t carry the dramatic force it does in the original, but we do see clearly noble heart corrupted.  The music, supplied by the onstage DJ Supernova, pulses with life, and the cascading rhymes of the lyrics are often inspired. My only qualm is that the rhythms vary so rarely that a certain monotony sets in. Nary a word or a joke gets lost, but the relentless tempos sometimes had me tapping my foot to the point that I felt it was less an appendage than a metronome.  Still, diversions keep coming, even when the tragedy reaches its climax. Emilia, though ostensibly dead, continues to pipe up with a word or two — a spot-on, juicy joke referencing the tendency of some of Shakespeare’s characters to die in several stages, soliloquizing long past a reasonable point.  “Othello: The Remix,” which, incidentally, counts John Leguizamo among its producers, will probably not, as in a good production of the original, reduce you to tears or leave you in stunned silence. But it’s a tickling refreshment to leave a production of this dark tale with a smile on your face, or an urge to head to the nearest nightclub.  Category Off Broadway, Musical, Play, Shakespeare  Runtime 1 hr. and 20 min.  Credits Written, directed and composed by GQ and JQ  Cast GQ, JQ, Jackson Doran, Postell Pringle and DJ Supernova  This information was last updated: Nov. 24, 2016  A version of this review appears in print on November 24, 2016, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Pulsing. Relentless. Tragic. And Funny?. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The Q Brothers have concocted another mash-up of rap and Shakespeare. And the laughter grows, right along with the stack of corpses.