One of today’s most notable theater collaborations began 13 years ago when director Arin Arbus and actor John Douglas Thompson set figurative fire to William Shakespeare’s Othello.
The inflammatory team followed that hot one with more Shakespeare. Now they add The Merchant of Venice to their list of accomplishments, as Thompson transitions with complete mastery from the deluded Moor to the cruelly mistreated, cruelly mistreating Shylock.
On Riccardo Hernandez’s elegant set suggesting the facade of a marble Venetian temple with two levels of steps and in Emily Rebholz’s modern dress (including what resembles a Burberry scarf), Thompson astounds the audience with another of his portrayals.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Every aspect of Shakespeare’s complex figure is on painful display. That includes Shylock’s confusion on why he’s so despised by the prevailing Christians. Thompson highlights the Jewish usurer’s adamantly demanding his due from a Christian man in an intolerant society. As well, Thompson makes indelible Shylock’s abject defeat when the pound of flesh he’s due according to the 3000-ducat bond he holds is rendered unattainable.
Thompson’s fine moments are too numerous to itemize completely in a brief report, but one is Shylock’s famous act-three-scene-one speech, the rhetorical query that begins “I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes?” Thompson speaks it not imploringly but straightforwardly, as a businessman merely stating the obvious. Unforgettable in the Shylock annals.
It turns out that Thompson is the mainstay in a production with a split personality, a condition prompting thoughts of Hamlet’s advice to the actors playing “The Murder of Gonzago.” The prince wants them to speak the speech “trippingly on the tongue” and “not to saw the air too much with your hand.”
Arbus’s troupe does speak trippingly during the second act. (The tragedy is trimmed, and in two acts rather than five.) They give the impression they’re suddenly caught up in the immediacy of the courtroom sequence where Portia (Isabel Arraiza), disguised as Balthazar, presides over the dispute between Shylock and the now seemingly penniless Antonio (Alfredo Narciso). To the actors’ credit, they remain in the “speak-the-speech-trippingly mood for the remainder of the play.
Not so during the first act. From the start there’s so much air-sawing that’s it’s quicker to list the ensemble members who aren’t indulging themselves than those who are: Thompson, longtime Shakespeare veteran Graham Winton as Jew-hating Salerio, Shirine Babb as Portia’s aide Nerissa, and David Lee Huynh as Nerissa’s lover Lorenzo. Nate Miller, as Lancelet Gobbo and carrying on like a banshee, is exempt from the criticism. The Shakespeare fool is meant to be an inveterate air-sawer, and Miller delights in that.
Chief among the worst act-one over-actors, due to their large roles, are Arraiza and Sanjit de Silva as Antonio’s best friend and Portia’s lover Bassanio. It’s as if these two and too many others have programmed their lines with accompanying gestures that very likely never differ from one performance to the next. Acting in the moment, which is what acting must always be, escapes them.
Arraiza’s Portia, first seen in a running outfit and about to have a boxing lesson, deliberates over her speeches to the unfortunate extent that they risk losing their meaning. De Silva’s first-act problem is that he’s much too pleased with his characterization, his too “look-at-me” acting.
When taking on Shakespeare, many current directors worry about making the works into plays for our time. The point of classics, it should be needless to mention, is that they’re already for all time. There are times, however, when they’re even riper for the times at hand, The year 2022 is one, as Arbus realizes full well and emphasizes.
As regularly reported in the national press, American anti-Semitism is on the rise and racism remains egregiously unabated. Arbus deals brilliantly with both. The anti-Semitism Shakespeare regards in the Venice of his drama is front and center. Arbus pairs it with domestic racism by casting Shylock’s daughter Jessica (Danaya Esperanza) and fellow usurer Tubal (Maurice Jones) so that when Salerio describes the arriving Tubal as “another one of [Shylock’s] tribe,” the audience can’t miss Arbus’ double-edged commentary.
Perhaps because Arbus wants the attitudes of the 16th century to have disturbing echoes today, she alters (spoiler alert) the Shakespeare finish in which Shylock has been utterly humiliated. Instead. Jessica and he remain alone on stage to recite the words to “Kol Nidre,” the chant heard on Yom Kippur, when Jews atone for sins they’ve committed in the year just ended.
This inclusion has the effect of changing Shylock’s degradation to his reclaiming Judaism for himself and daughter. This is Arbus, not Shakespeare, but, in the 2022 circumstance, it’s forgivable, no?
A final revelation: We all know theater is live and cherished for that. From performance to performance anything can happen. Often, accidents sidle in. One such incident took place at the performance I saw. When Shylock hears that Antonio’s ships have apparently failed and that he will be able to collect the pound of flesh, he shouts, “Thank God.”
At just that moment, the yarmulke Thompson wears fell off. It was as if God had just reminded us that “Vengeance is mine!” It was as if the Old Testament God was rebuking Shylock for taking revenge into his own hands, a revenge that, because of rash actions, would ultimately undo him.
Among the innumerable gifts for which we thank God, live theater is one—here abetted by Arbus and Merchant of Venice cast.
The Merchant of Venice opened February 15, 2022, at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center and runs through March 6. Tickets and information: tfana.org
