by Sam Juliano
“Which is the Christian and which is the Jew?” intones the Duke of Venice at both the beginning and ending of the new production of The Merchant of Venice, recently staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theatre. An all-male cast navigates one of the Bard’s most problematic plays in a three-storied jailhouse that incarcerates those in conflict. The play is updated to a contemporary period, and the language is again manipulated to accommodate audiences who wouldn’t negotiate a traditional staging without the text in their hands. Merchant is an uneasy hybrid of comedy and tragedy that has always perplexed audiences, even in traditional transcription, so the bold adaptation here by Edward Hall and Roger Warren is doubly difficult even for Shakespeare aficionados, let alone the laymen. Scholars have classified the work as a comedy, but audiences are far more intrigued with Shylock’s dilemma than they are with Bassanio’s mission to win Portia. The Bard apparently did not figure that Shylock’s acute intelligence and humanity would overcome his apparently intended role as a droll reprobate, but his love for his daughter is feral, and certainly more deeply conveyed than his devotion to ducats. (more…)
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