'Shylock' Echoes Across History
ART of WNY presents a 'Merchant of Venice' for the modern moment
Often Shakespeare is put on a pedestal, his words treated like theatrical scripture. Nothing wrong with that; he was a darn good playwright.
Once you’ve gotten to know him, though, Shakespeare begins to feel less like an idol and more like a contemporary. For Lara Haberberger, who fell under Shakespeare’s spell as a student, it is more than that. The Bard of Avon has become a collaborator. Haberberger’s new play, “Shylock,” onstage now at American Repertory Theater of WNY, is a play-within-a-play adaptation of “The Merchant of Venice.”
Haberberger was deliberate in her choice of material. “The Merchant of Venice” has always been a problematic play, and its issues are as problematic now as ever.
The trouble comes from its lopsided plot, which practically canonizes Antonio, a rich, antisemitic ship owner, while demonizing Shylock, the Jewish moneylender who seeks murderous revenge for the abuse Antonio has inflicted upon him. Neither man comes out particularly well at the end, even though “Merchant” is traditionally viewed as a comedy.
Haberberger does away with any equivocation. Her “Shylock” is a play with something to say, and it says it as much by absences as with its content. She pares down the beefy romance/friendship/debt narratives involving Portia, Bassanio, Jessica and Lorenzo to the bare bones, leaving what amounts to a messy pound of flesh: the conflict between Antonio and Shylock.
She also has moved the setting from 16th century Italy to the 1940s in a Nazi concentration camp and turned the story into an exercise in experimental theater. With the muffled sound of a Hitler rally in the background, the show opens with two camp prisoners silently sorting belongings, presumably from previous victims, under the watchful gaze of an armed guard/soldier (John DellaContrada). This deliberate pantomime is squirmingly effective in building up our unease.
Then: Actor Kathleen Rooney, with her swastika armband and air of superiority, marches in as the Nazi “Director.” Looking straight at the audience, she smilingly announces that the prisoners have been tasked with presenting Joseph Goebbels’ favorite Shakespearean fable, “The Merchant of Venice.” (Note: The Nazis really did love the play, for tragically obvious reasons.)
For the next hour, as the tension is palpable.
The prisoners are played by ART regulars Andrew Zuccari and Monish Bhattacharyya. The boiled down adaptation includes quick outlines of the preliminary action before Antonio makes his ill-advised deal with Shylock. (Bring some understanding of “Merchant” with you will help immensely.)
Against the gray background of their prison, the two assigned actors hesitantly and nervously perform as though their very lives depend upon it. The Director interrupts only occasionally to adjust the narrative (Shylock’s Jewish daughter doesn’t get to marry a Christian here), but otherwise what we hear are Shakespeare’s words.
The show runs fast but also deep, until the water turns to ice when Bhattacharyya as Shylock steps forward and says the words, “I am a Jew.”
He then recites the bitterest rhetorical questions ever asked:
“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?
“Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
“Shylock” is a rough, quick play that has been made to make a point. It elevates the humanity of “the others” among us -- those who are condemned by the actions of the few and the silence of the many. To quote Bertolt Brecht, who knew something about Nazis: "Art is not a mirror for reality, but a hammer with which to shape it."
ART founder Matt LaChiusa enjoys using that hammer. As he described “Shylock:” “It’s compelling. Not your holiday musical sing-along.”
Or: You could call it a candle in the darkness.
………….
“Shylock” continues in ART of WNY’s Compass Performing Arts Center, 545 Elmwood Ave. (upstairs), through Dec. 14. Showtimes are Thursdays and Fridays (no show on Thanksgiving) at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 5 p.m. Tickets are $28.52; $23.18 for students and military. Go to artofwny.org.
Also, on Nov. 30 at 7 p.m. (after “Shylock”), ART will host a staged reading of Camilla Maxwell’s comedy “This Is Our Year (A Story of Love, Loss and the Buffalo Bills).” Free to the public (except Patriots and Chiefs fans, according to ART).
Photo caption: Andrew Zuccari, Monish Bhattacharyya and John DellaContrada in “Shylock” at ART of WNY. (Image courtesy of ART.)