Comment
Comments: 0
The Merchant of Venice
Monday 5:00 AM, 15/11/2010
When I reviewed the Public Theater's Central Park production of "The Merchant of Venice" back in June, I said that it might well end up on Broadway, and that it deserved to. This has now happened, and the main reason for the transfer is, needless to say, the presence of Al Pacino in the cast. Even so, what was true six months ago is true today: Mr. Pacino is a galvanic Shylock, but this "Merchant" would be more than good enough to play on Broadway no matter who was in the title role.
The best news is that Daniel Sullivan and Mark Wendland, the director and set designer, have managed to take a site-specific outdoor production and move it to the proscenium stage of the Broadhurst Theatre without any loss of theatrical potency. If anything, the show is more tightly focused in its smaller indoor home.
Shakespeare on Broadway has tended in recent seasons to be spotty, usually because of the stunt casting that makes such productions as Jude Law's "Hamlet" financially feasible. Fortunately Mr. Pacino's performance, in which he plays Shylock as an old-fashioned "stage Jew" driven to the edge of madness by his lust for revenge, is no stunt. He is a veteran stage actor who knows how to nail every line to the auditorium's back wall, and even if you think he's flirting with caricature?which he is?you'll find the results enthralling. I don't know whether Mr. Pacino has toughened up his interpretation since I last saw it or whether I've gotten onto his wavelength, but I found him entirely believable this time. The look of demented ecstasy on his face as he takes knife in hand to hack a pound of flesh out of the chest of Antonio (Byron Jennings) is the stuff bad dreams are made on.
The point of this "Merchant," however, is that Mr. Pacino's Shylock, far from being a flashy star turn, is integral to a reading of the play that seeks to solve the "problem" of its anti-Semitism. Even though Shakespeare gives him a fair chance to state his case, Shylock is still the villain of the piece, a hard-hearted "currish Jew" who gets what's coming to him. How, then, to put the audience on his side without doing violence to the spirit of the play?
Mr. Sullivan's solution is to set "The Merchant of Venice" in a brokerage house in Edwardian London, where it would have been taken for granted that rich Jews were richly deserving of Christian contempt. This directorial decision shifts much (if not all) of the blame for Shylock's villainy onto the shoulders of his genteel tormentors, and Mr. Sullivan has added two other touches that shift still more of it. In addition to inserting a hair-raising pantomime scene in which Shylock is baptized by force, he stages the end of the play in such a way as to suggest that Jessica (Heather Lind), Shylock's faithless daughter, is wracked with guilt for having betrayed her father.
I must point out, however, that what Mr. Sullivan has done all but turns on its head the plain meaning of the text of "The Merchant of Venice." For my part, I prefer to see the play directed in an unsparingly harsh manner that doesn't paper over its ugliness, the way that Barbara Gaines staged it for Chicago Shakespeare Theater in 2005. But Mr. Sullivan's softer-edged interpretation works on its own terms, and no matter how you think "The Merchant of Venice" ought to be done, this version will sweep you along with such hell-bent momentum that you'll forget there was an intermission.
Most of the principal players from the Shakespeare-in-the-Park production have moved to Broadway with Mr. Pacino, including Mr. Jennings, Ms. Lind, and the luminous Lily Rabe as Portia, and their acting is as impressive now as it was in June (though I still think Ms. Lind is a little bit too nice). Mr. Wendland's set, a sinister-looking network of metal fences and scaffolds mounted on tracks that ring the cast like the walls of a circular prison, is just as effective. Would that the cheap seats were a whole lot cheaper, but don't begrudge Mr. Pacino his big-name salary. He's earning every cent of his fee?and then some. You'll never see a more exciting "Merchant of Venice,"
The best news is that Daniel Sullivan and Mark Wendland, the director and set designer, have managed to take a site-specific outdoor production and move it to the proscenium stage of the Broadhurst Theatre without any loss of theatrical potency. If anything, the show is more tightly focused in its smaller indoor home.
Shakespeare on Broadway has tended in recent seasons to be spotty, usually because of the stunt casting that makes such productions as Jude Law's "Hamlet" financially feasible. Fortunately Mr. Pacino's performance, in which he plays Shylock as an old-fashioned "stage Jew" driven to the edge of madness by his lust for revenge, is no stunt. He is a veteran stage actor who knows how to nail every line to the auditorium's back wall, and even if you think he's flirting with caricature?which he is?you'll find the results enthralling. I don't know whether Mr. Pacino has toughened up his interpretation since I last saw it or whether I've gotten onto his wavelength, but I found him entirely believable this time. The look of demented ecstasy on his face as he takes knife in hand to hack a pound of flesh out of the chest of Antonio (Byron Jennings) is the stuff bad dreams are made on.
The point of this "Merchant," however, is that Mr. Pacino's Shylock, far from being a flashy star turn, is integral to a reading of the play that seeks to solve the "problem" of its anti-Semitism. Even though Shakespeare gives him a fair chance to state his case, Shylock is still the villain of the piece, a hard-hearted "currish Jew" who gets what's coming to him. How, then, to put the audience on his side without doing violence to the spirit of the play?
Mr. Sullivan's solution is to set "The Merchant of Venice" in a brokerage house in Edwardian London, where it would have been taken for granted that rich Jews were richly deserving of Christian contempt. This directorial decision shifts much (if not all) of the blame for Shylock's villainy onto the shoulders of his genteel tormentors, and Mr. Sullivan has added two other touches that shift still more of it. In addition to inserting a hair-raising pantomime scene in which Shylock is baptized by force, he stages the end of the play in such a way as to suggest that Jessica (Heather Lind), Shylock's faithless daughter, is wracked with guilt for having betrayed her father.
I must point out, however, that what Mr. Sullivan has done all but turns on its head the plain meaning of the text of "The Merchant of Venice." For my part, I prefer to see the play directed in an unsparingly harsh manner that doesn't paper over its ugliness, the way that Barbara Gaines staged it for Chicago Shakespeare Theater in 2005. But Mr. Sullivan's softer-edged interpretation works on its own terms, and no matter how you think "The Merchant of Venice" ought to be done, this version will sweep you along with such hell-bent momentum that you'll forget there was an intermission.
Most of the principal players from the Shakespeare-in-the-Park production have moved to Broadway with Mr. Pacino, including Mr. Jennings, Ms. Lind, and the luminous Lily Rabe as Portia, and their acting is as impressive now as it was in June (though I still think Ms. Lind is a little bit too nice). Mr. Wendland's set, a sinister-looking network of metal fences and scaffolds mounted on tracks that ring the cast like the walls of a circular prison, is just as effective. Would that the cheap seats were a whole lot cheaper, but don't begrudge Mr. Pacino his big-name salary. He's earning every cent of his fee?and then some. You'll never see a more exciting "Merchant of Venice,"
The Great Al Pacino In The Merchant of Vemice
Monday 4:53 AM, 15/11/2010
Giving what promise to be the performances of this season, Lily Rabe, as Portia the heiress, and Al Pacino, as Shylock the usurer, invest the much-parsed trial scene of this fascinating, irksome work with a passion and an anger that purge it of preconceptions. You may find yourself trembling, as one often does when something scary and baffling starts to make sense. At the same time you?re likely to have trouble figuring out exactly where your sympathies lie. For at this moment everybody hurts.
In traditional presentations of Act IV, Scene 1 of ?Merchant? Portia, disguised as a male lawyer to rescue a man under threat of death, emerges as an avenging angel; Shylock, viciously poised to kill an enemy in an act of legal redress, is usually the vanquished villain or, in more fashionable contemporary readings, the Jewish victim of a Christian social order reasserting itself.
But what you read in Ms. Rabe?s delicately expressive features is hardly a look of triumph. Her face is that of someone registering a precious and irrevocable loss. In an odd way the fatalistic, shrunken sorrow of Mr. Pacino?s crouched Shylock, who has not only been thwarted of his revenge but also stripped of his identity, seems to mirror Portia?s own state of mind.
The throbbing ambivalence at the heart of Mr. Sullivan?s spirited ?Merchant? was evident when it was first staged in Central Park last summer. But this revelatory Public Theater production, which opened on Broadway on Saturday night, has been refined to an even higher level of clarity and subtlety, virtues that do not always walk hand in hand.
There have been a few cast changes since the summer ? most for the better and none for the worse. What particularly astonishes is how completely the entire cast seems to inhale the same air. Shakespeare in New York is often a patchwork affair, stitched-together showcases for stars grinding their classical chops and directors with radically hip high concepts. But Mr. Sullivan, his cast and his design team have collectively shaped a ?Merchant? that feels utterly fluid and original.
This production gives the lie to theater snobs who insist that only the British can do Shakespeare properly. (You need only compare Mr. Sullivan?s ?Merchant? with last season?s rudderless imported London production of ?Hamlet? starring Jude Law.)
In traditional presentations of Act IV, Scene 1 of ?Merchant? Portia, disguised as a male lawyer to rescue a man under threat of death, emerges as an avenging angel; Shylock, viciously poised to kill an enemy in an act of legal redress, is usually the vanquished villain or, in more fashionable contemporary readings, the Jewish victim of a Christian social order reasserting itself.
But what you read in Ms. Rabe?s delicately expressive features is hardly a look of triumph. Her face is that of someone registering a precious and irrevocable loss. In an odd way the fatalistic, shrunken sorrow of Mr. Pacino?s crouched Shylock, who has not only been thwarted of his revenge but also stripped of his identity, seems to mirror Portia?s own state of mind.
The throbbing ambivalence at the heart of Mr. Sullivan?s spirited ?Merchant? was evident when it was first staged in Central Park last summer. But this revelatory Public Theater production, which opened on Broadway on Saturday night, has been refined to an even higher level of clarity and subtlety, virtues that do not always walk hand in hand.
There have been a few cast changes since the summer ? most for the better and none for the worse. What particularly astonishes is how completely the entire cast seems to inhale the same air. Shakespeare in New York is often a patchwork affair, stitched-together showcases for stars grinding their classical chops and directors with radically hip high concepts. But Mr. Sullivan, his cast and his design team have collectively shaped a ?Merchant? that feels utterly fluid and original.
This production gives the lie to theater snobs who insist that only the British can do Shakespeare properly. (You need only compare Mr. Sullivan?s ?Merchant? with last season?s rudderless imported London production of ?Hamlet? starring Jude Law.)
You need Flash player 8+ and JavaScript enabled to view this video.
(+2)
(-2)
