The Merchant of Venice [Classic Stage Company] – 25 November 2024

William Shakespeare is the most widely produced playwright worldwide. Or at least, his popular, less problematic works. Collectively, the theatre community gives this man a lot of clout for his insightful, pithy moments. Not only are we constantly reimagining his plays, there’s a whole world of Shakespeare-inspired fiction: adaptations to the modern vernacular, sections set to music, speculations about his life, plays using his characters, translations to other mediums… the list is endless. Igor Golyak’s new interpretation of The Merchant of Venice uses absurdity and farce to ask the theatre community why we are so enchanted by William Shakespeare that we are completely willing to ignore, forget, and forgive the stereotypes he reinforced in problematic ways. Though The Merchant of Venice focuses on antisemitism, many of Shakespeare’s plays have problematic depictions of gender, childhood, sexual consent, race, disability, social class/enslavement/royalty, and those suffering from mental health challenges. Golyak took each stereotype to its extreme and never pulled back, provoking serious questions about why we like Shakespeare. Is it just because we think we ought to?

Shylock (Richard Topol) was the embodiment of this question. In the beginning, allowing people to stereotype his Judaism worked to his advantage, so he played along and played it up. But then, when it was used against him, no one was willing to take him seriously, a tragedy which ended in his gruesome demise (staged in a makeshift gas chamber). This is not unlike Golyak’s critique of Shakespeare– we take the parts we want and pretend the complexity doesn’t need to be examined until we believe in our perception of his greatness regardless of its truth. The other characters, Portia (Alexandra Silber), Bassanio (Jose Espinosa), etc were incredibly vapid caricatures of gender. Their lack of depth was appalling clear, and though it made an interesting point, after a while watching them became tedious. The same couple of light cues, the unnecessarily long transitions, the general feeling that the cast was scrambling to be ready for the next thing so they couldn’t be fully present in this one, and the overuse of references to popular music lacked nuance and stalled the story’s progress because every scene felt the same and it was difficult to connect the isolated scenes to each other to determine significance. Most scenes felt like quick throwaways, stand-alone moments full of gimmicks, and, sadly, many of the characters felt the same way. I couldn’t feel the connections of the characters to each other (though Shakespeare is famous for love stories that emerge and terminate in mere days).

As a Jew, I struggled to sit through Shylock’s exaggerated moments with the fake nose and the fangs. Knowing this was conceived by the Jewish director who brought us Our Class wasn’t enough to prevent the unsettled feelings his costumes, props, and mannerisms evoked in me. I was unable to shake the visceral reaction I had, and even though his unmasked moments were chilling and his death hauntingly gruesome, my emotions surrounding this portrayal were complex and uncomfortable. The gender stereotypes were also uncomfortable, and although I understand that this discomfort was intentional, there was more discomfort in this show than I could reasonably process. The lack of an intermission made the experience feel endless, and I ultimately left feeling betrayed, both by the genius that is William Shakespeare and the genius that is Igor Golyak. The scene transitions dragged out, but with all the moving lights and loud music they didn’t give the brain enough space to absorb what was happening and really focus on processing the meaning in the text and the meaning in Golyak’s interpretation.

Although I left with a vague interpretation of what I saw, I also left exhausted. The scenes had blurred together in my mind before the end of the curtain call, and I was left with a couple of thoughts, none of them profound. I left thinking the superhero costumes were clever given that in Shakespeare’s plays where women dress up as men that is frequently what women think they are supposed to be. The final image evoked gas chambers for me in a way that puzzled me because the story didn’t logically end in that space— it was a sudden moment in another time, but I didn’t think the parallel fit other than an unequivocal acknowledgment that antisemitism can lead to dead Jews. I left wondering if I had misremembered the richness of characters other than Shylock— I had thought that Portia and Bassanio, among others, were supposed to have a little more depth. The production tried to take on too many interpretations in too many styles (talk show, reality show, puppet show, superhero movie, game show, farce, concert, slapstick, etc.), and, as a result, most of the audience was too overwhelmed and exhausted to walk out with an interpretation of their own. In this particular case, I feel that trying fewer gimmicks and parallels would have led to greater understanding. In other words, less would have been more.

I attended this performance on a press pass through Keith Sherman & Associates.