A moment of frivolity in the reality-television program that serves as the ruling conceit of Arlekin Players Theatre’s idiosyncratic adaptation of The Merchant of Venice.
The ambitious Arlekin Players Theatre is in residence at Classic Stage Company (CSC) with The Merchant of Venice. The energetic production on CSC’s Lynn F. Angelson stage may come as a jolt to playgoers fond of Shakespeare’s play.
The Arlekin artists have spent a substantial part of 2024 in back-to-back engagements of Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s tragedy Our Class, first at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and, subsequently, in Manhattan at CSC. Our Class explores lifelong relationships among 10 schoolmates born around 1925—some Jews, others Catholics—from a Polish village where, in 1941, gentile citizens herded their Jewish neighbors into a barn and set the structure aflame, letting blame for the resulting massacre fall on Poland’s Nazi occupiers. Adapted by Norman Allen and directed by Arlekin’s founder and artistic director, Igor Golyak, Our Class was a powerful depiction of anti-Semitism, auguring important work ahead for the youthful troupe.
Richard Topol (center top) dramatizes some of the noxious anti-Semitic tropes of Shakespeare’s time and after in a manic scene with Antonio (T.R. Knight) and his Muppet-inspired sidekicks Salanio and Salarino.
Arlekin’s follow-up to Our Class is an idiosyncratic account of Shakespeare’s Merchant (again directed by Golyak). This production is advertised as a new version of the play; but the emphases, especially in Golyak’s direction and the adaptation (which is also by him), make it a protracted riff on anti-Semitic themes from the Renaissance to the present and a notable companion piece to Slobodzianek’s study of racial prejudice.
Golyak has transferred the setting of his Merchant to a television studio, recasting Shakespeare’s narrative as “The Antonio Show,” a fictive public-access cable-television program (part follow-documentary, part talk show, with a smattering of variety and musical performance mixed in). The superb Arlekin actors—after months of performing Slobodzianek’s dark, harrowing drama—are kicking up their heels, showing off impressive clowning skills. Though the production flirts with excess in the zany-humor department, it’s a lark, for the most part, watching the comic hijinks of these young pros, some of their routines relevant to Shakespeare’s script, some not so much.
The complicated conflicts of The Merchant are jump-started when Bassanio (José Espinosa) prevails upon Antonio (T.R. Knight), the titular merchant, to give him a short-term loan to meet the extravagant expenses of courting high-born Portia (Alexandra Silber). Antonio’s riches are tied up temporarily in shipping ventures but, wanting to help his close friend, he offers to guarantee a third-party loan, if Bassanio can locate a willing lender and arrange a repayment date after the ships are scheduled to return. Shylock (Richard Topol), the lender Bassanio secures in Venice’s insular business world, turns out to have a grudge against Christians and against Antonio most of all.
It’s safe to say Shylock is the best-known character in The Merchant of Venice (and arguably the most famous Jew in English literature). But the beleaguered moneylender is not the play’s protagonist—that function is served by Antonio, who stands to lose “a pound of flesh nearest the heart” at Shylock’s behest if he defaults as guarantor of the 3,000 ducats Bassanio has borrowed.
Jessica (Gus Birney) makes nice with her father, Shylock (Richard Topol), just prior to absconding with his riches, eloping with gentile Lorenzo, and converting to the Christian faith. Photographs by Pavel Antonov.
The Bard’s precise attitude to Shylock is a matter of debate, and directorial judgment has varied widely on that question. The last major New York revival, directed by Arin Arbus in 2022, featured John Douglas Thompson playing Shylock as a fuming yet sympathetic outsider, railing eloquently against the injustice of anti-Semitism. Thompson brought great poignance to Shylock’s most famous phrases: “Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions … warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?” In the current production, Topol—thoroughly capable of a nuanced performance and deserving of that opportunity—hurls Shylock’s familiar lines about with unmitigated rage, punctuating the single-note delivery with cartoonish deportment. Topol’s moneylender is less character than caricature, replete at times with Groucho Marx moustache and eyeglasses, Dracula cape, and a train of actors in Batman headdresses at his heels. This is Shylock seen exclusively from the point of view of the virulently anti-Semitic gentiles of the story, and the effect is jarring.
For this post-October 7, 2023, moment, Arlekin’s take on The Merchant is timely, and the risk of being didactic is justified. Yet the deviations from Shakespeare’s narrative, however defensible, are bound to strike a sour note with the Bard’s devotees or spectators hoping to gain an accurate sense of the original work. At an early performance, several ticketholders made premature departures, especially at intermission. Since that time, the intermission has been eliminated.
Anyone versed in current New York theater may view this production as a missed opportunity to see the Arlekin actors—notably, Topol, Silber, Knight, Espinosa, Gus Birney (who is Shylock’s daughter Jessica), and Tess Goldwyn (as Nerissa)—play these plum roles straight. In this holiday season, a host of CSC patrons are probably thinking that Shakespeare’s unadulterated Merchant performed by such a capable cast would be more welcome than gourmet fruitcake or even vintage Champagne.
The CSC/Arlekin Players presentation of The Merchant of Venice plays through Dec. 22 at the Lynn F. Angelson Theatre (136 E. 13th St.). Evening performances are Tuesday through Friday and Sunday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 7:30; matinees are Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at 1:30 p.m.. For tickets and information, visit classicstage.org.
